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ULYSSES S. GRANT 
HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NZW YORE ' BOSTON - CHICAGO ■ DALUiS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAX & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. 

TORONTO 



\ 




U. S. Grant, age 60 years. 
From a photograph by Fredricks. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 

HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER 



BY 

HAMLIN GARLAND 

AUTHOR OF "MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS," "PRAIRIE SONGS,' 
"ROSE OF DUTCHER's COOLLY," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1920 



Copyright, 1898, by 
Hamlin Garland- 



tL (ill 



INTRODUCTION 



THIS book is not to be taken as a military history of 
General Grant. It is not, perhaps, everything that is 
understood by the word " biography," but it tells the story 
of Ulysses Grant from his birth to his death. It is an at- 
tempt at characterization. It has not been my intention 
to set down all the significant words and deeds of General 
Grant, nor to analyze all the official acts of President Grant, 
but to present the man Grant as he stands to-day before 
unbiased critics. If I succeed in making the reader a little 
better acquainted with his great and singular character, I 
shall feel that my larger purpose has been carried out. 

In order that I might secure the fullest understanding 
of my subject, I have visited every town wherein Ulysses 
Grant lived long enough to leave a distinct impression 
upon its citizens. This search for first-hand material took 
me at the start to southern Ohio, to Georgetown, his boy- 
hood home, and to Ripley, and to Maysville, Kentucky, 
where he attended school in his youth. I also studied the 
records on file in the adjutant's office at West Point, and 
the newspaper files in Washington, St. Louis, New York, 
Cincinnati, Detroit, Louisville, Chicago, Springfield, Ga- 
lena, Cairo, Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, Richmond, 
Monterey, and Mexico City. In all of these cities I sought 
for and obtained interviews from those who had known 
Ulysses Grant personally and had some significant message 
to impart. 

In order to realize the Mexican battle-fields, I visited 
Monterey, Vera Cruz, Jalapa, Perote, Puebla, Contreras, 
Churubusco, El Molino del Rey, and San Cosme. I stud- 



vi INTRODUCTION 

ied also the topography of Vicksburg and MilHken's Bend, 
the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Richmond, and Petersburg. 

The plan of the volume, in brief, is this : The first chap- 
ters take up the development of Ulysses Grant from his 
birth to his appointment at West Point, presenting what- 
ever seems significant of his life at the Military Academy ; 
then passes to his experiences in the Mexican War, which 
formed his postgraduate course, and was his first intro- 
duction to national questions and to military intrigues. I 
then study his period of failure in civil life, presenting him 
as nearly as possible as he appeared at that time to his 
family and to his friends, after it seemed that his career as 
a soldier had ended. I purposely exclude all forecast and 
all prophecy. 

The section which deals with his command is not a his- 
tory of the war with the South, nor even a history of 
General Grant's campaigns, but the story of his growing 
command, and his marvelous development during those 
four epic years. His motives for action, rather than his 
action, are the chief matters of these chapters. In precisely 
the same way, the delineation of the reconstruction period 
is intended to satisfy the reader who asks, " What did 
Ulysses Grant think during that period, and what were his 
motives?" 

The chapters on the Grant administrations attempt to 
show what I believe to be the fact — that through all the 
complications of this period, through the weltering chaos 
of political knaveries and double-dealings, President Grant 
pursued a simple, straightforward course. He had in him 
small capacities for deceit or dishonesty. Throughout his 
whole life, it seems to me, he remained practically the same 
simple-minded and sincere man. 

The volume does not hesitate to present the deep 
shadows of the picture as well as the high lights, for they 
are correlative. To leave them out would not only falsify 
a human life, but would render the picture flat and cheap. 
Ulysses Grant had his defeats and his sorrows. He had 
his weaknesses as well as his great qualities, and they are 
frankly stated. 

He died right. No public life — not even that of Lincoln 



INTRODUCTION Vll 

— closed more attractively for the biographer. At the end 
he discovered in himself new tendencies and still deeper 
reserves of will-power than he had hitherto shown. He 
had the great happiness, also, of seeing the love and ad- 
miration of the whole people, North and South, come back 
to him, in higher degree than he had ever before enjoyed. 
He lived long enough to understand that the people of his 
native land began to perceive through all his mistakes the 
steady progression of his simple purpose, which was to 
rebuild the nation on a basis of perfect love and confidence 
between the States. Unquestionably, the fame of Ulysses 
Grant as " the great warrior of peace " is secure. 

Hamlin Garland. 

Washington, March, 1898. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



IN beginning my research in Georgetown, I received 
most valuable assistance from the Hon. C. A. White, 
a lifelong acquaintance of Ulysses Grant; Mrs. Lucinda B. 
Powers, daughter of Dr. Bailey, Mr. Grant's near neigh- 
bor; Mr. U. S. Grant White, son of Carr B. White, 
Grant's most intimate boy friend; Judge James Marshall, 
Ulysses' cousin; Mr. W. H. Wilson; the late Judge Low- 
den ; and Mr. Henry J. Hanna. From Admiral Daniel 
Ammen I obtained many anecdotes covering a long period 
of Grant's life, from his boyhood to his presidency. Cap- 
tain Albert Kautz and Captain U. S. Grant White of the 
navy also aided me in my work. 

I wish publicly to acknowledge also the valuable and 
painstaking assistance of Mr. Chambers Baird of Ripley, 
Ohio, who secured for rne interviews with Mr. W. B. 
Campbell, Mr. Morgan Murphy, Mr. W. S. Galbreath, ex- 
Mayor Edwards, and others who knew Grant as a student 
in Ripley and Maysville. 

With regard to Grant's life at West Point, I am especially 
indebted to General W. B. Franklin, General James Long- 
street, General Simon B. Buckner, General D. M. Frost, and 
Father Dehon, all his classmates. Through the courtesy 
of the commandant, I was able to examine all the records 
of Grant's conduct while a cadet ; and Mr. William Ward, 
clerk in the adjutant's office at the academy, cheerfully 
aided me in my search of the records. Through the cour- 
tesy of Mr. J. W. Lowe of Chicago and Mr. Joseph C. 
Hardie of Washington, I am able to present matter hitherto 
unpublished concerning Grant's life at West Point and in 

ix 



X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Mexico. In Mexico City, through the kindness of Mr. 
Frank R. Guernsey, I was able to secure witnesses and 
valuable hints giving me the point of view of the Mexican 
authorities. 

I received most valuable information concerning Grant's 
life in Detroit from General Friend Palmer, Mr. Silas 
Farmer, and J. E. Elderkin, drum-major in Grant's regi- 
ment. At Sackett's Harbor I had the assistance of Mr. 
Walter Camp, a local historian, who remembered Grant 
very well. Very early in my study I found that Albert D. 
Richardson, author of " The Personal Life of U. S. Grant," 
had been most painstaking in his search for material. At 
Detroit, as at St. Louis, I interviewed some of the very 
men with whom he had talked nearly thirty years before. 
I here acknowledge an indebtedness to his book second 
only to the " Personal Memoirs." With regard to Captain 
Grant's life on the coast, I am especially obliged to Colonel 
Thomas M. Anderson, the present commandant of Van- 
couver Barracks, and Major Theodore Eckerson, now of 
Portland. 

With regard to Grant's return to Bethel and to St. 
Louis, I am indebted for valuable information to Mr. 
George B. Johnson of Cincinnati, to Mr. George W. Fish- 
back and Mr. James E. Yateman of St. Louis, to Colonel 
Henry Clay Wright of Carondelet, Mr. Jefferson Sapping- 
ton, Esq., Mrs. John F. Long, and other of the old neigh- 
bors and friends in and about St. Louis. Also to Mrs. 
Louisa M. Boggs, the wife of Grant's partner in the real- 
estate business, and to many others. 

I wish publicly to thank General Augustus L. Chetlain, 
Mr. R. H. McClellan, Mr. Lewis A. Rowley (son of Gen- 
eral Rowley), Mr. Richard Barrett, Esq., Mr. M. T. Burke 
(now of La Crosse, Wisconsin), Mr. A. H. Haines, Mr. 
Carson Scott, Mr. O. B. Upson, Mr. H. B. Chetlain, and 
Mr. Leigh Leslie, for assistance rendered in Galena. 

In Springfield, Illinois, I had the aid of General John M. 
Palmer, Mr. John W. Bunn, Mr. Lincoln Dubois, the Hon. 
J. C. ConkHng, and Mr. John McCann Davis. Also Cap- 
tain Harrison Black, Lieutenant Joseph W. Vance, Captain 
S. C. Burroughs, and S. S. Boggs, all of the original mus- 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI 

ter of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers. General J. E. 
Smith and J. Russell Jones of Chicago also contributed 
valuable interviews. 

At Cairo I had the assistance of Mr. W. N. Butler, Esq., 
Lieutenant Frank Parker, Colonel J. S. Reardon, and other 
veterans of the early Illinois regiments. Also valuable 
material, both in interviews and writing, was obtained from 
General John M. Thayre of Nebraska, Colonel L. B. Eaton 
of Memphis, Major J. W. Powell of Washington, and many 
others. Mr. J. W. Kirkley and Captain Leslie Perry of the 
War Records Office have been most hearty in their coopera- 
tion. Mr. Kirkley has been for twenty years in the War 
Records Department. Mr. George C. Gorham, for many 
years clerk of the Senate, and a student of the recon- 
struction era, aided me by suggestion and criticism. 

In dealing with Grant's later days I am permitted to use 
information obtained from Mr. John Russell Young, Mr. 
W. A. Purrington, Mr. Walter S. Johnston, Mr. George 
Spencer, Captain N. E. Dawson, Dr. George H. Shrady, 
and General Simon B. Buckner. 

Among the principal commanders under Grant whose 
personal testimony was of great value to me are Generals 
H. G. Wright, J. J. Reynolds, W. B. Franklin, J. E. 
Smith,* A. J. Smith,* J. H. Wilson, Robert McFeely, 
T. Van Vliet, A. L. Chetlain, Colonel Amos Webster, and 
Colonel C. B. Comstock. Colonel Marshall of General 
Lee's staff. General Marcus Wright, and General Heth of 
the Confederate service were most kind in granting the use 
of testimony. 

In addition to all these, I wish also to thank Mrs. U. S. 
Grant and her sons Frederick, Ulysses, and Jesse for their 
instant assistance when called upon either by " McClure's 
Magazine " or myself. 

• Since deceased. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

— ^ I The Childhood of Ulysses Grant .... i 

^11 Boy Life in Georgetown 8 

III Ulysses Goes to Boarding-School .... 17 

IV Ulysses Enters West Point Academy ... 24 
V The Trials of a Plebe 35 

VI Vacation-Time 47 

VII Last Days at West Point 50 

VIII Grant's First Command 54 

IX Grant's Courtship 57 

X Call to War 61 

XI Grant's First Battle 69 

XII Quartermaster's Duties fall to Grant . . 74 

XIII Grant Joins General Scott 82 

XIV The Wonderful Inland March 9x 

XV Grant at Molino del Rey 97 

XVI Close of the War 105 

XVII Grant's Marriage 109 

XVIII Lieutenant Grant is Ordered to the Coast . 117 

XIX Grant is Promoted, but Resigns 121 

XX Captain Grant Turns Farmer 131 

XXI Grant Tries to Make a Living in St. 

Louis • 141 

XXII Captain Grant Goes North 148 

XXIII The First War Meetings in Galena ... 154 

XXIV Captain Grant and the Political Colonels . 161 

xiii 



XIV 

CHAPTER 

XXV 

XXVI 

XXVII 

XXVIII 

XXIX 

XXX 

XXXI 

XXXII 

XXXIII 

XXXIV 

XXXV 

XXXVI 



XXXVII 
XXXVIII 

XXXIX 

XL 

XLI 

XLII 

XLIII 

XLIV 

XLV 

XLVI 

XL VI I 

XLVIII 

XLIX 

-..-^__ L 



Conclusion 



CONTENTS 

PACB 

Grant's Growing Command 177 

Grant Captures National Fame .... 187 
Grant put under Arrest by General 

Halleck 194 

The Battle of Shiloh Church 201 

From Shiloh to Milliken's Bend , . . 208 

Grant Captures Vicksburg 221 

Grant Rescues Chattanooga 239 

Grant Meets Lincoln and is Made Com- 
mander-in-Chief 253 

Going into the Wilderness 268 

The Sullen Siege of Petersburg . . . 283 

The Beginning of the End 297 

The Assassination of Lincoln, the Surren- 
der OF Johnston, and the Grand Re- 
view 315 

Grant Protects his Conquered Foes . 325 
The General Takes a Summer Vaca- 
tion 334 

Grant and Reconstruction 344 

Grant as Secretary of War 365 

Grant Saves the Union Party 376 

General Grant Lays Down the Sword . 385 

Grant in the White House 396 

Grant's Reelection to the Presidency . 406 

Grant's Second Term 424 

Days of Great Trials 433 

Grant as a Private Citizen Goes Abroad 450 

The Third Campaign Opens 469 

The Grant & Ward Failure 486 

The Final Year of Life 504 

The Death- Watch in the Wall . . . 517 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



U. S. Grant, Age 6o Years Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Fredricks. 

Pacing page 

Stairway in the Grant Homestead at Georgetown, 

Ohio lo 

From a photograph taken especially for "McCIure's Magazine," and now first 
published. 

Building used by Jesse R. Grant as the Finishing- 
House OF his Tannery at Georgetown, Ohio io 

It still stands, opposite the old Grant homestead. 

Facsimile Showing Grant's Autograph in the Adju- 
tant's Record, West Point 32 

This signature, "Ulysses Hiram Grant," was written the same day as the one, 
"U. H. Grant," in the register at Roe's Hotel, May 29, 1839. 

Facsimile of Grant's Certificate of Enlistment . 32 

This certificate was signed by Grant, September 14, 1839, after he had passed his 
examinations. It bears what is, so far as known. Grant's earliest autograph as 
U. " S. " Grant. By this time the mistake of Congressman Hamer in so naming 
him to the War Department had fixed that as his official designation. 

View up Hudson River from Mortar- and Siege- 
Battery, West Point 38 

From a photograph by Pach Brothers, New York. 

A "Plebe" Boat-Race, West Point 38 

From a photograph loaned by Lieutenant S. C. Hazzard, West Point. 

A Sketch made by Grant about the Time He was 

AT West Point 48 

Reproduced by permission from the original drawing, owned by C. F. Gunther, 
Chicago, and now first published. 

XV 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing page 

A Water-Color Sketch made by Grant about the 

Time He was at West Point 48 

Reproduced by permission from the original, owned by Mrs. Rotherey, Newark, 
New Jersey, and now first published. 

U. S. Grant as Brevet Second Lieutenant, Age 21 

Years 54 

Taken in Cincinnati in 1843, just after graduation from West Point. 

U. S. Grant as Captain, while Stationed at Sacketts 

Harbor, New York 1849, Age 27 Years ... 54 

From a very small miniature. 

The House in Which Grant Went to School at 

Georgetown, Ohio 58 

"White-Haven," the Dent Homestead near St. 

Louis, Missouri 58 

Redrawn from an old drawing owned by Mrs. U. S. Grant. 

Lieutenant U. S. Grant and Lieutenant Alexander 
Hays in 1845, when They were Starting for 
the Mexican War 66 

The original picture, owned by Mrs. Agnes M. Hays Gormly, was taken at Camp 
Salubrity, Louisiana, in 1845. Beside Grant (the figure in the background) is his 
racing pony Dandy, and beside Lieutenant Hays is his pony Sunshine. The two 
men had been fellow-cadets at West Point, and served in the same regiment in the 
Me-idcan War. Afterward Hays, like Grant, retired from the army, to reenter it 
at the breaking out of the Civil War as a colonel of volunteers. He became a 
brigadier-general, and was killed in the battle of the Wilderness. Grant, on 
learning of his death, said: "I am not surprised that he met his death at the 
head of his troops ; it was just like him. He was a man who would never follow, 
but would always lead, in battle." 

Grant at Chapultepec loo 

The battle of Chapultepec, stowing Grant's regiment, the Fourth Infantry, in the 
foreground on the right. 

House in which General Grant was Married, St. 

Louis, Missouri i^o 

From a recent photograph taken expressly for " McClure's Magazine." 

West Front of Fortification and Barracks, Fort 

Wayne, Detroit ii4 

From a photograph loaned by Captain E. D. Smith of the Fifteenth Infantry. 
The building shown was erected in 1848, the year Grant first went to Detroit, 
and is the only one now standing at Fort Wayne that could have been in existence 
when Grant was stationed there. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XVll 

Facing page 

Officers' Barracks, Sacketts Harbor, New York . 114 

From a photograph owned by Colonel Walter B. Camp. 

The House in which Grant Lived at Fort Van- 
couver IN 1852 AND 1853 122 

Redrawn from a photograph loaned by Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, present com- 
mandant of Fort Vancouver. 

Fort Vancouver 122 

Redrawn from a painting by Dr. Covington, now owned by Captain James A. 
Buchanan of the Eleventh Infantry, 

Mrs. U. S. Grant and her Two Eldest Children, 

Frederick D. and Ulysses S., Jr., about 1854 . 133 

From a daguerreotype taken at St. Louis, now owned by Mr. U. S.' Grant, Jr., 
and reproduced here with his permission. 

Grant's Letter Offering his Services to the 

Government 162 

In the original letter the last three lines and the signature are on a second page. 

U. S. Grant, Age 41 Ye.\rs 228 

Taken in 1863, before Vicksburg. From a defective negative. 

Distinguished Generals who were Fellow-Cadets 

OF Grant at West Point 240 

From the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert Coster. 

U. S. Grant Early in 1865, Near the Close of the 

War, Age 43 Years 308 

From a spoiled negative. 

U. S. Grant not Long before his First Election as 

President, Age 46 Years 3^6 

U. S. Grant Soon after his First Inauguration as 

President, Age 47 Years 3^6 

Hannah Simpson Grant, Mother of General Grant 396 

From an original photograph owned by Helen M. Burke, La Crosse, Wisconsin. 

Jesse Root Grant, Father of General Grant, Age 

69 Years ' : "^^^ 

From an original photograph owned by Helen M. Burke of La Crosse, Wisconsin. 



XVIU LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pacing page 

U. S. Grant at the Beginning of his Second Term 

As President, Age 51 Years 426 

From a photograph by Brady. 

U. S. Grant, Age 54 Years 446 

Grant with Li Hung Chang 466 

U. S. Grant when He Took up his Residence in 

New York, Age 59 Years 488 

From a photograph by W. Kurtz. 

General Grant and his Family at Mount McGregor 

IN the Closing Days of his Life 518 



ULYSSES GRANT; SECOND 
PREFACE 

SINCE this book was written (in 1896) nearly all 
of the contemporaries of Ulysses Grant have passed 
to the silent majority. Hardly one of all those who were 
most valuable witnesses to his deeds and his character 
are now alive. Within ten years after I secured the testi- 
mony of Generals Buckner, Franklin, Wright, and Long- 
street, they, like others of his classmates, comrades, and 
antagonists, had passed away. My work was hardly com- 
pleted before some of them were no longer able to give 
their testimony. 

To see General Longstreet I journeyed all the way 
from New York City to Gainesville, Georgia, but the story 
to which I listened was amply worth the journey. All 
the afternoon and evening I listened and watched while 
the heroic shadows of the past filed through the old man's 
mind. His tall, stooping figure and his dim eyes were 
already touched with the coming mist of evening, but his 
spirit was that of a gallant chieftain. He had no equivocal 
words concerning Grant. He loved him and honored him. 

From Jefferson Sapington, Grant's neighbor on the Gra- 
vois, and from the wife of Grant's partner, Mrs. Henry 
Boggs, as well as from Burke who worked as a clerk in the 
Galena store, I gathered invaluable personal material, 
knowing well that their terms of Kfe were each year more 
uncertain. Most of my witnesses are gone, but their rec- 
ords help to form this book. Others are in my files to 
be used in case of need, interlined with corrections by the 
witnesses themselves. All of them were used in making 
up the judgments in this volume. 

With Grant's friends have also departed his enemies. 
I sat one evening in an obscure Chicago tenement beside 
the bed of MacDonald, one of the Whisky Ring leaders, 

xxi 



xxii ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE 

patiently enduring his long and tedious tale, which had very 
little to do with Grant and a great deal to do with him- 
self. In an eastern country house, I took notes while one 
of Grant's mihtary critics paced up and down the room, 
thundering out his argument to prove that Ulysses Grant 
was a vastly overrated man and that he (a subordinate) 
was the real author of the Vicksburg Campaign. 

Time has its terrible revenges ! Who now cares whether 
this man or that man considered liimself a bigger man 
than Grant? Into the night they go, one and all, while 
the man who called for ''Unconditional Surrender," and 
who said, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
all summer," holds his place beside Abraham Lincoln as 
the man who saved the Union in 1865. 

If I were writing this story to-day, I should lay greater 
stress on the estrangement which came between Ulysses 
Grant and his father after his resignation from the army, 
for the reason that it accounts in large measure for his 
apparent failure as a civiUan. No man, no matter how 
great he may be, can escape these domestic complications, 
and Grant was no exception. Any history of him which 
leaves out the antagonisms of The Dents and The Grants 
will be a false picture — or at least a faulty picture, for old 
Jesse Grant was not only deeply disappointed in his son's 
marriage into a slave-owning family, he refused to aid 
him so long as he continued to Kve in the South. He is 
reported to have said, "Ulysses, when you are ready to 
come North I will give you a start, but so long as you 
make your home among a tribe of slave-owners I will do 
nothing." 

Grant was a loyal and tender husband, hence he stayed 
on in St. Louis, trying, for his wife's sake, to make a hving 
in a region where he was at once an ahen and a suspect. 
Concerning tliis time Mrs. Boggs, the wife of Captain 
Grant's partner in the real estate business, is a com- 
petent witness, and I have in hand careful notes of her 
testimony. The picture which she draws of Grant at this 
time is sad but admirable. "When he came to live at our 
house he was in despair," she says in her letter to me. 
"He was gentle and dignified and uncomplaining, but it 



ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE xxiii 

was pitiful to see him sitting silently in the cold, bare httle 
room which he rented of us. He was sober and wilhng to 
work and he did work, but in those disturbed times he 
found it difficult to find employment. He had no trade, 
no profession, and he was a Northerner. That must never 
be left out of the account." 

It is all fought out and swiftly receding now, and we can 
speak of it without heat as a powerful factor in the life 
of one of the world's great figures. A cannonball tosser 
cannot exercise with feathers, and this great military 
genius, in times of peace and in a community where every- 
body was poHtically opposed to him, was helpless. It was 
not a matter of dissipation. I have gone into all that 
with the greatest care, and I can report once again that 
Grant, even in that dark hour, was a gentleman. Mrs. 
Boggs said, ''I liked him and respected him even while I 
felt sorry for him." 

The use of slaves on the farm at Gravois was a source 
of irritation and shame to Grant. JefTerson Sapington told 
me that he and Grant used to work in the fields with the 
blacks. He said with glee, "Grant was helpless when it 
came to making slaves work," and Mrs. Boggs corrobo- 
rated this. "He was no hand to manage negroes," she 
said. "He couldn't force them to do anything. He 
wouldn't whip them. He was too gentle and good tem- 
pered — and besides he was not a slavery man. I can see 
him now as he used to sit so humbly at my fireside. He 
had no exalted opinion of himself at any time, but in those 
days he was almost in despair. He walked the streets 
looking for something to do. He was actually the most 
obscure man in St. Louis. Nobody took any notice of 
him. He tried in every possible way to get his capabilities 
before the people, and failed. It was never in him to push 
himself forward. St. Louis was very hot poHtically that 
year, and I remember well the time came when my hus- 
band refused to shake hands with him for taking the 
'wrong side,' as we called it then. The Dents were all 
Southern and so were we. 

"It was a hard situation for Captain Grant. He was a 
Northern man married into a Southern, slave-owning 



xxiv ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE 

family and Dent openly despised him. We all said 'Poor 
Julia ! ' when we spoke of her marriage. Grant's habits 
were good while he hved with us. I recall hearing Mr. 
Boggs say to Richardson, the historian, ' I never saw Grant 
under the influence of hquor in my Hfe.' Grant was not a 
man to frequent saloons. He was not that kind of a man. 

"He was a sad man. I never heard him laugh out loud. 
He would smile and he was not what you would call a 
gloomy man, but he was a sad man. He was a gentle, 
kind man with no special powers for getting along. I 
don't think he saw any Hght ahead — not a particle. I 
don't think he had any ambition further than to feed and 
clothe his Uttle family. 

''His mind was almost always somewhere else. He said 
very little unless some war topic came up. If you men- 
tioned Napoleon's battles or the Mexican War he was 
fluent enough. He was a domestic man, extremely home- 
loving in his ways, and his wife had a very great influence 
over him. I have no doubt she kept him in St. Louis 
longer than he otherwise would have stayed. The Dents 
took pride in their Southern birth, while the Grants were 
hard-working, economical folks. The two famihes never 
fused. Old Jesse Grant was very outspoken about it. 
I recall his saying to me, 'Are you related to that Dent 
tribe?' He used just that word tribe, and it meant a great 
deal as he spoke it. After Grant took the Northern side 
Colonel Dent was furious, swore he'd shoot Grant if he 
ever set foot on his farm. Of course this was in the wild 
days of sixty-one and two. Mrs. Dent always Hked 
Captain Grant and believed in his abihty." 

These family antagonisms explain many curious facts. 
There is no record that Grant's mother ever saw the White 
House, but there is positive testimony that old Jesse never 
slept there — the Dents were in possession ! No doubt 
this friction was a sorrow to Grant, but it was not a con- 
dition which military genius could alter. He bore with it 
patiently and nobly. No one ever heard him complain 
of it, but it must be reckoned with in any estimate of his 
otherwise incomprehensible stay in Missouri. 

In looking back upon Grant's marvellous career from the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE XXV 

standpoint of the World War we naturally ask ourselves, 
"Has he suffered diminishment ? " In my judgment he 
has not. His armies have been reduced by comparison 
with the millions in command of Foch, but the amazing 
miUtary skill and the invincible soul of the silent com- 
mander remain. Indeed his personality looms ever larger 
in our history. No other figure save that of Lincoln 
disputes that far horizon with him. He fought the Civil 
War to a victorious end, and in his terms of peace he showed 
a spirit which is in sharp contrast with the ruthless cam- 
paigns of the German generals. He fought like a gallant 
and chivalrous soldier, expressing neither hatred nor 
revenge. He battled with grim, invincible resolution, 
but always without heat or exultation. No great soldier 
ever lived with a kindlier, saner spirit. 

In the matter of trench warfare he was a pioneer. 
When his armies sank into the ground before Vicksburg, 
they forecast the long line from Belgium to the Alps. 
The precision of his campaigns in Tennessee and Virginia 
has not been surpassed by any modern general, and his 
skill in handling an army is reflected in the concise, clear, 
and masterly phrases in which his orders are expressed. 
War with him was not an adventure, but a duty. He 
loathed strife. The pomp and glory of an army were re- 
pellent to him, and he took no part in any parade where his 
presence was not necessary. His modesty in the midst 
of military display makes him one of the strangest com- 
manders in the annals of war. He had the genius which 
is unaccountable — the ability to do the unforeseen. 
Without doubt he would have been a supreme commander 
in France, adequate and imperturbable. 

With regard to his place as President he gains rather 
than loses by the passage of time. As the men who were 
his bitter political enemies pass away and the issues for 
which he really stood grow clearer, it is evident that he 
was adequate in the White House. His mistakes were 
after all in minor matters. He stood for the Union, for 
justice, for clemency all the time. As he had no hate in 
battle, so he had no vindictiveness in reconstruction. He 
kept the peace and he executed the laws. 



XXvi ULYSSES S. GRANT; SECOND PREFACE 

He was not a law-maker. His conception of the presi- 
dency was not like that held by later occupants of the 
White House. He was in no sense a dictator, he was care- 
ful not to usurp any of the functions of the legislative or 
judicial branches of the government. Ludicrous as it now 
seems, this "Man on Horseback" was accused of desiring 
to be a Czar, and yet he never asked for any power which 
did not belong to the Executive Branch of the government. 
No man ever sat in the chair who was more scrupulous 
about this point. It is true he exercised his powers in the 
manner of a soldier, but it was at a time when he was 
needed. He was the one man whom the people entirely 
trusted. His former opponents depended upon him and 
were not betrayed. 

Washington, Lincoln, Grant — this is the way the names 
of our great men run. Washington who established the 
RepubHc, Lincoln who freed the slaves, and Grant who 
saved the Union with the force of arms. This sequence 
cannot be broken. All other names, glorious as they may 
be, will be counted after these. So long as this Union is 
an inspiration and a power, so long as the United States 
shall last as an entity, these names will be emblazoned at 
the head of the long roll of our most illustrious dead. 

Hamlin Garland. 
New York, 1920. 



GARLAND'S LIFE OF 
GRANT 



CHAPTER I 

THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT 

T TLYSSES GRANT was born in a cabin home standing 
LJ in a little village on the north bank of the Ohio 
River, at a point about twenty-five miles east of Cincin- 
nati. This cabin stood comparatively unchanged up to 
the year 1885, when it was taken down and removed to 
Columbus as a relic. 
\ It was a one-story building of two very small rooms, 
f with an outside chimney at one end, in the manner of 
' Southern cottages. In one room the family lived in the 
. daytime, cooking at the big fireplace, and eating at a pine 
liable. In the other room they slept. 

It was almost as humble in appearance as the home in 
which Abraham Lincoln first saw the light. The village 
was called Point Pleasant, and it was indeed a beautiful 
place. Below the door the Ohio River curved away into 
blue distance, and behind it rose hills covered with tall 
woods of oak and walnut and ash. At that time the river 
was the great highway, and over its steel-bright surface 
the stern-wheel steamers Daniel Boone and Simon Ken- 
ton plied amid many flatboats, like immense swans sur- 
rounded by awkward water-bugs. 



2 LIFE OF GRANT 

At this time Point Pleasant had hopes of being a 
metropolis. It was deceived. It is to-day a very small 
village, at whose wharf only an occasional steamer conde- 
scends to stop. In 1820 it contained, among other indus- 
tries, a tannery ; and the foreman of this tannery was an 
ambitious, stalwart young fellow named Jesse Grant. He 
had been in business for himself some years before, and 
was looking for a chance to begin again. Sickness had 
broken him up in business at Ravenna, and had swept 
away his savings — savings which represented the most 
unremitting toil and the most rigorous self-denial ; but 
he was once more accumulating a fund, and was nearly 
ready for a second venture. 

He married, in 1821, a slender, self-contained young 
girl named Hannah Simpson — a girl of most excellent 
quality, handsome, but not vain, and of great steadiness 
of purpose. In 1822 his first son was born, and in 1823 
tanner Grant decided upon Georgetown as the best point 
to set up a tannery of his own. His keen perception of 
the commercial changes going on decided this movement. 
Georgetown was the county-seat of the new county of 
Brown, and had the further advantage of being situated 
in a wilderness of tan-bark. By reason of its oaks, 
Georgetown became the boyhood home of Ulysses Grant. 

The Grant family made a vivid impression upon the 
citizens of Georgetown at once. Jesse Grant was a 
strong man physically and mentally, though possessed 
of many idiosyncrasies. He was nearly six feet in height, 
and alive to his finger-tips. His head was large and his 
face strongly modeled, but his eyes were weak and near- 
sighted. He looked the transplanted New-Englander he 
was. 

He came of a strong family of most admirable record. 
His father and grandfather had been soldiers in the colo- 
nial and Revolutionary wars respectively, his grandfather 
attaining the rank of captain. His father was lieutenant 
at Lexington, and fought through the entire Revolution- 
ary War. The Grants had been Connecticut Yankees for 
several generations, and Jesse brought the vigor, hardi- 
hood, and shrewd economy of his forebears to the less 



THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT 3 

thrifty Ohio border. He took a prominent position in 
the village at once ; for he loved to talk, to maKe speeches, 
and to argue, and, besides holding advanced ideas, he 
wrote rhymes. He had the gentle art of making enemies 
as well as friends. He was pronouncedly of the North ; 
his neighbors were mainly of the South. 

Hannah Simpson, his wife, had no discoverable enemies. 
She was almost universally beloved as a Christian woman 
and faithful wife and mother. But it took longer to know 
her. She was the most reticent of 'persons. " Ulysses 
got his reticence, his patience, his equable temper, from 
his mother," is the verdict of those who knew both father 
and mother. Others go further and say : " He got his 
sense from his mother." 

In truth, the Simpsons were a fine old family. They 
were quite as martial as the Grants, were as genuinely 
American in their history, and were possessed apparently 
of greater self-control. Hannah Simpson was the daugh- 
ter of John Simpson, a man with the restless heart of a 
pioneer, who had left his ancestral home in Pennsylvania, 
near Philadelphia, and had settled in Clermont County, 
Ohio, a few years before. He had built a brick house 
and opened a large farm, and his position was most hon- 
orable in his town of Bantam. Hannah Simpson, his 
daughter, seems to have gathered up and carried forward 
to her son Ulysses the best qualities of her people. That 
she was a remarkable woman all her neighbors bear testi- 
mony. She never complained of any hardship or toil or 
depression. She seldom laughed, and her son Ulysses 
once said, " I never saw her shed a tear in my life." She 
was as proud of her family history as her husband was of 
his, but she said nothing about it. She never argued, 
never boasted, and never gossiped of her neighbors. Her 
husband bore testimony of her character in words well 
chosen: " Her steadiness and strength of character have 
been the stay of the family through life." Her old neigh- 
bors call her " a noble woman." 

A large part of the criticism of Jesse Grant arose from 
two sources — his disputatiousness and his Northern pre- 
judices. In 1823, as now, Georgetown was inhabited by 



^ LIFE OF GRANT 

native families, that is to say, by families at least two re- 
moves from the old world, as a roster of the names will 
show. There was scarcely an Italian, Russian, French, or 
Scandinavian among them ; but many were from Kentucky 
and Virginia, and the town partook almost equally of 
South and North in respect of customs, speech, and politi- 
cal prejudices ; possibly at that time the South predomi- 
nated. Jesse Grant was a Yankee, and a natural radical in 
politics. He was quite ready to argue, and dispute arose 
at once. 

The village was laid out around the court-house square, 
in Southern fashion. It was a town hewn out of a mighty 
forest of trees. On every side the lofty walnut and maple 
and oak and ash trees stood in ranks, and the farmers tilled 
around the immovably rooted boles of girdled oaks. To 
this day the fringes and fragments of woods, and especially 
the stumps, testify of the giants of other days. 

The town, consisting of a score of houses, possibly, was 
set just where the broken land, some ten miles back from 
the Ohio River, levels up into a sort of plateau, with 
White Oak Creek to the west and Straight Creek to the 
east. The soil was fat and productive, as the settler could 
well perceive by measuring the giant oaks which had risen 
out of it, and he set himself to work like some valorous 
but inconsiderate and inconsiderable insect to gnaw down 
the forest and let in the sunlight upon his corn and 
potatoes. 

- The life which the boy Ulysses touched was therefore 
■ primitive, unrefined, and serious. The manners of the vil- 
lasre were almost as rude as those of the farms. The houses 
were small, unadorned, and overcrowded with children. 
The women cooked at the open fireplaces with pots and 
cranes, with " reflectors " and " Dutch ovens " as luxuries. 
The ceilings were very low, the walls bare, the furniture 
rude and scanty. The interiors were without a single touch 
of refining grace, save when at night the fireplace threw a 
golden glory over the rough plaster, and filled the corners 
of the room with mystery of shadow-play. 

The type of house most common was a modification in 
frame or brick of the woodsman's cabin, with a chimney 



THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT 5 

at each end, and a little lean-to kitchen behind. The Grant 
home for the first few years was a small, low brick structure 
with one room, a kitchen, and a garret. This means that 
the family ate, met their kind, and slept in two rooms. 
This^aTmost universal poverty of room produced the trun- 
dle-bed, which shoved under the bed of the parents like a 
bureau drawer. More ambitious houses were soon built, 
but in general the two-roomed cabin continued to be the 
typical home of the villager as well as of the woodsman. 

Newspapers were few, but they were read with minute 
care. Life was timed to the slow pulsing to and fro of the 
clumsy stage, and to the stately languor of the stern- wheel 
steamers, whose booming roar sounded clamorously in the 
night from the river mist ten miles away. The fact that 
Georgetown was an inland town, and that it was a farming 
community, kept it comparatively free from broil and blood- 
shed, rude though it was. It had also repose and a cer- 
tain security of life which found some compensation for its 
remoteness. Ripley, down on the Ohio River ten miles 
away, was the principal market, but it seemed likely to be 
more. It was considered entitled to regular stops on the 
part of the steamers, which swung to with elaborate and 
disdainful courtesy in answer to signals from the lesser 
towns. From Ripley or Higginsport, Georgetown was 
reached by stage over hill and through deep woods. 

Ulysses Grant lived for sixteen years in this locality, 
and upon the boy mind were impressed the faces, the 
speech, the manners, and the daily habits of these people. 
He loved the town with the love men have for the things 
thus clothed upon with childish wonder, and which never 
lose tlieir halo. 

The citizens were a plain people of unesthetic tempera- 
ment, sturdy of arm and resolute of heart, as befitted 
woodsmen. " Nonsense " they could not abide, and they 
were quick to perceive Jesse Grant's " foolish pride " in 
his little son Ulysses. They were amused at this name 
" Ulysses." which they soon parodied into " Useless." 
" How did you come to saddle such a name on the poor 
child?" some of them asked. 

I'he storv was curious. As related by the father, ft 



^ LIFE OF GRANT 

appeared that after the birth of his eldest son the common 
difficulty of choosing a name arose. Multitudes of sugges- 
tions only confused the young parents the more, until at 
last it was proposed to cast the names into a hat. This 
was done. A romantic aunt suggested " Theodore." The 
mother favored " Albert," in honor of Albert Gallatin. 
Grandfather Simpson voted " Hiram," because he con- 
sidered it a handsome name. The drawing resulted in 
two names, Hiram and Ulysses. 

" Ulysses," it is said, was cast into the hat by Grand- 
mother Simpson, who had been reading a translation of 
Fenelon's " Telemachus," and had been much impressed 
by the description given of Ulysses. The ^ boy was 
named " Hiram Ulysses Grant." But the father always 
called him Ulysses, and never Hiram, " My Ulysses " 
was a common expression of his, and the rude jesters of 
the village mocked his utterance of it. 

Other children came to the Grants — Simpson (three 
years younger), Clara, Virginia, Orvil (nearly thirteen years 
younger), and Mary, the youngest of them all ; but Ulysses 
ihemained the father's pride, and upon him he built ah 
his hopes. Ulj^sses developed early into a self-reliant 
child, active and healthy. He came at the age of seven 
to a share in the work about the house and yard. He be- 
gan to pick up chips and to carry in the wood for the big 
fireplaces, quite like the son of a farmer. He was called 
" Lys," or, in the soft drawl of the South, " Lyssus " ; his 
playmates had not yet begun to find it worth while to 
tease him about his name. He had wonderful love for 
horses, and as soon as he could toddle he delighted to go 
out across the yard, where, at the hitching-poles before 
the finishing-room of the tannery, several teams were al- 
most always to be found on pleasant days. He crawled 
about between the legs of the dozing horses, and swung 
by their tails in perfect content, till some timid mother 
near by rushed in to Mrs. Grant with excited outcry : 
" Mrs. Grant, do you know where your boy is? He 's out 
there swinging on the tails of I.oudon's horses!" 

But Mrs. Grant never seemed to worry about Ulysses in 
the least. She was not of those mothers whose maternal 



THE CHILDHOOD OF ULYSSES GRANT 7 

love casts a correspondingly deep shadow of agonizing 
fear. " When Ulysses was sick she gave him a dose of 
castor-oil, put him to bed, and went calmly about her 
work, trusting in the Lord and the boy's constitution," one 
neighbor said. 

Mrs. Grant saw that Ulysses understood horses, and 
that they understood him, so she interfered very little in 

; his play with the teams across the way. She was too busy 

f to have an eye to his restless activity. 



CHAPTER II 

BOY LIFE IN GEORGETOWN 

AT eight years of age Ulysses began to drive a team 
Jr\. and to break bark into the hopper of the bark-mill, 
which was precisely like a big cofifee-mill, put in action by 
a horse attached to a circling sweep. Into a big iron 
hopper it was the boy's duty to break the long slabs of 
bark with a mallet. The strips as they came from the woods 
were several feet in length, and in order to reach the 
grinding machinery they needed to be broken into chunks 
four or five inches long. This was wearisome business, 
especially when the pawpaws were ripe and the hawk was 
indolently floating on the western wind. The mill stood 
under a shed where there was nothing to see, and, besides, 
the boy doing the work was obliged to keep his head out 
of the way of the sweep, and to see that the horse kept a 
steady gait. " If you stopped to think how many strips 
were ahead of you the thought was appalling." 

Breaking bark did not please Ulysses so well as driving 
the team which hauled the bark from the woods, and he 
escaped it in every way possible. When his father said 
to him, " We shall have to go to grinding bark," he would 
rise " without saying a word, and start straight for the 
village, to get a load to haul or passengers to carry, or 
something or other to do, and hire a boy to come and 
grind the bark." He was sometimes able to persuade the 
girls to help him by exalting the privilege, in the way of 
Tom Sawyer, and by earnestly detailing the need there 
was of his riding on the sweep behind the horse. This was 
great generalship, and across the space of half a century 



BOY LIFE IN GEORGETOWN 9 

his girl playmates still remember his roguish triumph. 
He was always on hand, also, when the wheat was being 
threshed, or for any work in which there was a chance to 
ride a horse. 

All around him, during those years, the mighty battle 
with the forest went on. Axes rang incessantly ; trees 
crashed and fell ; columns of smoke rose to the sky at mid- 
day, and splendid fires glowed at night. It was like the 
attack of brownies on a chained and helpless army of 
giants. The steam sawmill had not yet added its devour- 
ing teeth to the destruction of the trees; it was mainly 
hand-work. Ulysses took active part in this devastation. 
He helped strip the bark from the oaks and set fire to the 
stumps and the heaps of branches. He drove team when 
the bark was carried to the mill, and he lent a hand to roll 
the useless logs into piles to be burned. There was 
something splendid in this activity, while the tannery grew 
more and more repulsive to him, and secretly he made up 
his mind never to be a tanner. He would grind bark in 
the yard, if need were, but to scrape hides, or even handle 
them, was out of the question. He never came nearer to 
being a tanner than this. 

About a mile to the west of the village square a little 
stream called White Oak Creek runs through a deep coulee, 
or valley. In those days the stream was a strong, swift 
current, and there were mills for grinding corn and wheat 
located along its banks ; and the farmers came in caravans 
from the clearings far to the north with grain to be ground, 
and at night they camped like an army-corps in the splen- 
did open forest of the bottom-lands. It was a beautiful 
experience for the boys of Georgetown to see these camp- 
fires gleaming all over the lowlands, to hear the mules and 
horses call for supper, to see the smoke curling up, and to 
hear the hearty talk and laughter of the men. This was 
a favorite playing-ground for the boys, and Ulysses longed 
to join these caravans. 

The creek was full of fish at that time. There were 
swimming-holes, which became skating-ponds in due sea- 
son, and all good things to eat grew on these bottom- 
lands. Then, too, the teams filed past on their way to 



lO LIFE OF GRANT 

Higginsport with their flour to load on the flatboats bound 
for New Orleans. It all had mystery and allurement in it, 
and one of the strongest passions Ulysses Grant felt at this 
time was the wish to travel — to go down the Ohio River 
and see where the water went to ; to go up the river and 
find where the flatboats came from. He said little of this 
longing, for he was trained to hide his emotions. 

Ten years of careful management made Jesse Grant one 
of the well-to-do citizens of the town. He had a com- 
fortable brick house, he wore gold-bowed glasses, and he 
possessed a carriage. Most people went afoot or on horse- 
back in that day, but he had a driving outfit, which 
Ulysses began to use when a mere child. " At eight and 
a half years he had become a regular teamster," his father 
states, " and used to work my team all day, day after day, 
hauling wood. At about ten years of age he used to 
drive a pair of horses all alone from Georgetown, where 
he lived, to Cincinnati, forty miles away, and bring home 
a load of passengers." 

His father did not insist on his working about the bark- 
mill, provided he obtained a substitute, and readily enough 
intrusted Ulysses with a team, and was quite willing for 
him to have a horse of his own. Indeed, he allowed him 
to manage the horses and take part in the farming. Chil- 
ton White, one of his playmates, remembers that he was 
always busy. " He was a stout, rugged boy, with a good 
deal of sleight in his work with a team. He liked horses, 
and always kept his span fat and slick." 

When Ulysses was in his twelfth year, a traveling 
phrenologist confirmed the father in his belief in his son's 
great ability. Of this famous incident there are two ver- 
sions. The father's story runs thus : 

When Ulysses was about twelve years old the first 
phrenologist who ever made his appearance in that part of 
the country came to the neighborhood. He awakened a 
good deal of interest in the science, and was prevailed 
upon to remain there for some time. One Dr. Buckner, 
who was rather inclined to be officious on most occasions, 
in order to test the accuracy of the phrenologist, asked 
him if he would be blindfolded and examine a head. 




Stairway in the Grant homestead at Georgetown, Ohio. 
From a photograph taken especially for this work. 




BuikUng used hy Jesse K. (irant as the finishing-house of his 
tannery at Georgetown, Ohio. 

It still stands, opposite the old Grant homestead. 



BOY LIFE IN GEORGETOWN II 

This was at one of his public lectures. The phrenologist 
replied that he would. So they blindfolded him, and 
Drought Ulysses forward to have his head examined. 

He felt it all over for some time, saying, apparently to 
nimself : " It is no very common head! It is an extraor- 
dinary head! " At length Dr. Buckner broke in to ask 
whether the boy would be likely to distinguish himself in 
mathematics. 

" Yes," said the phrenologist ; " in mathematics or any- 
thing else. It would not be strange if we should see him 
President of the United States." This made an inefface- 
able impression upon the father, and confirmed him in his 
»Delief that his son Ulysses was a child of destiny. 

The village version of the incident is quite different. 
vVith all his shrewdness and energy, the neighbors say, 
there was a strain of singular guilelessness in Jesse Grant. 
He was credulous and simple — in the old meaning of the 
word " simple." 

According to their report. Dr. Buckner was only put- 
ting up a practical joke on his neighbor Grant. As the 
timid and blushing Ulysses was pushed forward to the 
platform the crowd began to titter, and the quick-witted 
lecturer seized upon the situation. It was to him another 
numskull son of a doting father. As he muttered to 
nimself the crowd roared with delight. He spoke over this 
boy's head the same word of prophecy he had used in a 
hundred similar cases. It was a perfectly successful joke. 
The father believed the cheering to be in honor of his son. 
Ridicule made no difference with him ; he stuck to his 
faith unshakably. 

His faith, moreover, expressed itself in deeds. He sent 
Ulysses to school, in face of much discouragement. Being 
mindful of his own lack of education, and believing in his 
son, Jesse Grant was always an active supporter of the 
teacher. At a time when " book-l'arnin' " was at a sad 
discount, and when every hand was needed to make a liv- 
ing, the indomitable tanner kept his son in school, not let- 
ting him miss a day, thus setting his grim lips firmly in 
the face of derision. 

Mrs. Grant's sweetness and strength of character kep* 



12 LIFE OF GRANT 

her one of the best beloved women of the town, while her 
husband's outspoken, dogmatic opinions upon all public 
policies made him to be both disliked and respected. 

He was withal a sober man and an honorable man, and 
Mrs. Grant was considered a fortunate woman by her 
neighbors because her husband was "such a good pro- 
vider." The Grant house was considered one of the best 
furnished in the neighborhood. Mrs. Grant acquiesced in 
the plans to make Ulysses a great man, and through her 
efforts he was always nicely dressed and ready for school. 
How much further her love went she gave little sign. 

The feeling against Jesse Grant on the part of the pro- 
slavery element developed rancor on the part of many of 
the village boys toward Ulysses, and he suffered thereby 
not a little. According to the tales of old residents, the 
boys "were always laying for him," and stories are still 
current in Georgetown which are calculated to make him 
out a stupid lad. Of such is the famous horse-trade story, 
wherein Ulysses is said to have raised his own bid two 
points without waiting for answer on the part of the seller. 

In spite of these stories, it appears that the boys who 
knew him best had a high regard for him. He had a way 
of doing things which commanded respect. He had trav- 
eled a great deal, — he had been to Cincinnati, to Maysville, 
and to Louisville on business for his father, — and he had a 
team to drive just as if it were his own. These things 
entitled him to a certain respect on the part of his comrades. 

"There were, in fact, two sets of boys in the town, one 
very rough, and one very quiet set — that is to say, well- 
meaning; for while they were full of fun and noise, they 
were good, clean boys; they did not use liquor or tobacco; 
and it was to this company that Ulysses belonged. It was his 
habit to associate with boys older than himself, and this, with 
his staid demeanor, made him seem older than his years." 

He seldom did anything which could even be called 
thoughtless.* "He was the soul of honor," another play- 
mate bears witness. 

* Judge James Marshall tells an amusing story of his hospitable nature. 
There had been a cholera scare in town, and Uncle Jesse, being one of the 
few men who had traveled and knew a thing or two, was commissioned to go 
to Maysville and procure a supply of the cholera medicine which was used at 



BOY LIFE IN GEORGETOWN I3 

At ten years of age he had become a remarkable team- 
ster. He amazed his companions by his abihty to manage 
and train horses. There was something mysterious in his 
power to communicate to a horse his wishes. He could 
train a horse to trot, rack, or pace, apparently at will. He 
would do any honorable thing in order to ride or drive a 
fine horse. 

When he was about eleven years of age he made a 
reputation among the boys by riding the trick pony of a 
circus which came in trailing clouds of glorified dust, one 
summer day, like a scene from the " Arabian Nights." 

" It was a small animal show and circus," said Judge 
Marshall, " and one part of the entertainment was to turn 
a kangaroo loose in the ring, and ask some lively-footed 
boy to catch it. I considered myself a pretty good runner 
in those days, and I tried to catch the kangaroo, to the 
vast amusement of the people looking on. Ulysses, how- 
ever, was a plump boy, and not a good runner. He made 
no attempt at the kangaroo, but was deeply interested in 
the trick pony which had been trained to throw off any boy 
who attempted to ride him. He was a very fat bay pony, 
with no mane, and nothing at all to hang to. Ulysses 
looked on for a while, saw several of the other boys try 
and fail, and at last said : ' I believe I can ride that pony.' 
He anticipated the pony's attempts to throw him off by 
leaning down and putting his arms around the pony's neck. 
The pony reared, kicked, and did everything he knew to 
unhorse Ulysses, but failed ; and at last the clown acknow- 
ledged the pony's defeat, and paid the five dollars which 

that time. He brought back a demijohn of blackberry cordial, and a jug of 
medicine of that time which was popularly known as " No. 6." No. 6 
had various uses; it was a good thing to rub on a sprain, bruise, etc. One 
Sunday, shortly afterward, while the old people were all at church, the boys, 
tired with turning handsprings on the tan-bark, expressed a thirst, and Ulys- 
ses invited them all to come down cellar and test the cholera medicine. " We 
did not know how it was to be taken," said Judge Marshall, " but I know 
how we took it. With fine generosity, Ulysses offered us the No. 6, and we 
tasted it, and we did not like it. He then asked us to try the blackberry 
cordial, which we did, and liked ; and thereafter we often went down cellar to 
have a pull at the cholera medicine. I don't know whether we took it right 
or not, but certain it is we did not take the cholera. . . . At this time Ulysses 
was a plump, short, ruddy, staid, manly boy, never given to pranks. He 
never backed out of anything, and avoided any prominence; what he had to 
do he did well and promptly." 



14 LIFE OF GRANT 

he had promised to the boy who would ride him. As 
Ulysses turned away with the five dollars in his hand, he 
said to the boys standing round : ' Why, that pony is as 
slick as an apple.* " 

There are stories, also, which seem to illustrate his fer- 
tility of resource in practical affairs, and others to show 
his pertinacity of purpose. 

He was a successful farmer, and liked it very much ; in 
fact, his life was nearer that of a farmer's boy than a 
tanner's son. He was thrifty, too. " While the other boys 
were at play he was earning a quarter." All testimony 
points to his being a very busy and resourceful boy. 
He always had pocket-money earned by teaming. He 
worked willingly and steadily at hauling, breaking bark, 
and plowing. 

When he was not at work about the tannery or farm, he 
was conveying travelers to Ripley, to Maysville, to Hig- 
ginsport, to West Union, or to Cincinnati. In this way 
he earned enough money to buy a horse of his own. 
Once, when he was about thirteen years of age, he took 
a couple of lawyers across country to Toledo. Every- 
body was astonished to think Uncle Jesse would trust his 
boy on such a long trip. 

" Are n't you afraid he '11 get into trouble on the way ? " 

" Oh, no," replied the proud sire; " he '11 take care of 
himself." 

To understand to the full the resolution and good judg- 
ment required on this trip of several hundred miles, it 
must be remembered that in 1835 there were few pikes or 
bridges, and the streams were much deeper to ford than 
now. Jesse often sent his son to make collections or to 
transact important business. The boy certainly did not 
lack for employment, and yet, in the midst of teaming, 
grinding bark, and going to school, he found time to have 
a little fun. 

It was a good boy's country. It produced not merely 
great trees, and corn, and wheat : it produced pawpaws, 
and grapes, and May-apples, and blackberries, and hickory- 
nuts, and beechnuts, and all kinds of forage for boys. 
These things, in due season, they plucked and hoarded, in 



I 



BOY LIFE IN GEORGETOWN 1 5 

the alert seriousness of squirrels or young savages. Ulysses 
was often of these parties, and in winter many pleasant 
evenings were spent before the hearth, cracking nuts, in 
company with the White or Marshall boys. He could 
swim well, but was a poor fisherman ; he could play ball 
fairly well, and he could ride standing on one foot upon the 
back of a galloping horse. In winter-time he was a dar- 
ing and much-admired coaster down the steep street 
which fell away sharply from the square and ran past the 
tan-yard and the Grant homestead. It is a fine country 
to coast in, with many long, curving slopes of road running 
under magnificent trees, and past clumps of brush, and 
oyer bridges. 
-' He was a great favorite with the girls, though he was 
ot a demonstrative lover. He was kind and considerate 
o£ them, never rude and boisterous, and never derisive. 
" He was one of the few boys who had a team and sleigh 
at their disposal, and he took the girls a-sleighing," sitting 
silently in the midst of their shrieking and chatter. He 
never teased children younger than himself, or tortured 
animals. So runs the testimony of the women who knew 
him as a boy. He had the effect always of being a good 
hstener, and was counted good company, though never an 
jentertainer. '/He was more likea grown person thanaboy.? 

He was at fifteen a good-looking boy, with a large 
head, strong, straight nose, quiet gray-blue eyes, and flexi- 
ble lips. He was short and sturdy, with fine hands and 
feet. " He was not a brilliant boy, but he was a good 
boy," " a refined boy," " the soul of honor." ^ " He never 
swore or used vulvar words, and he was notably consider- 
ate and unselfish./ There is little record of his fighting. 

Of his education in Georgetown little can be said. He 
had been schooled of nature and by work and play, but 
up to his fourteenth year he had attended only the 
winter session of John D. White's subscription school,* 

* The following dunning letter would seem to indicate that there were those 
who could not, or would not, par, even in " truck " : 

District School-house, March 5, 1829. 
Dear Sir : Justice to myself and family compels me to make out my 
accompts and endeavor to collect them. I hope you will not be offended at 
my sending you tliis scribble, for I have not time to run about and make 



l6 LIFE OF GRANT 

which " took up " in a long low brick building standing 
on a knoll to the south of the town. Schools in country 
towns of that day were not taken very seriously by most 
of the citizens. To be able to read and write and cipher 
was considered very fair attainment. There were those, 
it is true, who wished their sons and daughters to study 
Lindley Murray and higher mathematics, but such ambi- 
tions were considered of questionable virtue. Ulysses 
was a quiet boy at school. " He never whispered or 
spoke in a low voice as if afraid to be heard." 

He won the admiration of his classmates in drawing. 
" He could draw a horse and put a man on him." 
He was strong also in mathematics — would not let his 
classmates show him the way to do problems, but always 
wanted to work them out himself. A certain wordless- 
ness and lack of dash, together with a peculiar guile- 
lessness, drew upon him the ridicule of the rude. His 
language was so simple and bare of all slang and profanity 
that it seemed poor and weak to his comrades. He 
suffered a certain persecution during all his days in 
Georgetown. 

collections. If I have got anything of you that I have not booked I am will- 
ing to settle for it. 

You have paid me as follows : 

In cash $2.00 

214 pounds beef at 2 cts 4-28 

One bushel corn 25 

Flour 50 

Pork 50^ 

2 baskets corn i6f 



$7.69! 



My acpt. for 1826 is $7-35l 

for 1827 8.00 

for 1828 4-22^ 



$19.58^ This is for the time 
7.69I you sent, and not ac- 
cording to your sub- 
Balance due $11.88^ scription. 

Yours, etc., in haste, 

John D. White. 



CHAPTER III 

ULYSSES GOES TO BOARDING-SCHOOL 

JESSE GRANT was a close reckoner in ordinary deal- 
ings, but he was more liberal with his son than most 
fathers of the village ; and the winter that Ulysses was 
fourteen he sent him to school in Maysville, a larger town 
just across the river, in Kentucky, fifteen or twenty miles 
from Georgetown. This was done in the hope that 
something a little better might be had in the way of 
schooling. 

No doubt the boy gladly accepted the opportunity, for 
Maysville was a city to him, and, besides, there were the 
steamboats, the beautiful river, and the wharves with 
their daily passenger and freight traffic. It was an old 
town, filled with houses of the old English type, such as 
Boston and Baltimore have in their older streets. It was 
a straggling town, extending along the sloping bank 
between the river and the bluffs behind. It was on slave 
soil, but it was not without its antislavery element even 
at that day. Jesse Grant, it is said, helped to found the 
first abolition society in Kentucky, in 1823. 

It was a finer place for a boy's life than Georgetown. 
There were boating, swimming, and fishing in summer, 
and beautiful skating and superb coasting in winter. Of 
his life in Maysville we know little ; but his old teacher 
and some of his classmates remember him well as a 
very quiet, pleasant boy. The vicious side of life never 
seemed to attract him, and he did nothing to set himself 
distinctively above or below his fellows. Richeson, his 
teacher, was a college-bred man of liberal tastes, and his 

17 



l8 LIFE OF GRANT 

methods as a teacher were peculiar and original. He 
made a strong and gracious impression on young Grant, 
who " ranked high in all his classes, and his deportment 
was exceptionally good." 

While attending the Maysville Seminary Ulysses 
boarded with the family of his uncle, Peter Grant, who 
was largely engaged in the salt trade. 

An old book containing the records of the Philoma- 
thean Society of Maysville, Kentucky, has something 
recorded of young Grant. Apparently he entered the 
club for the first time at its thirty-third meeting, January 
3, 1837, and took a prominent part at once. By a 
curious coincidence, the question for this first evening was, 
" Resolved, That the Texans were not justifiable in giving 
Santa Aiia his liberty." In the names of the debaters this 
night there appears on the record " H. U. Grant." He 
was on the affirmative side. He was on the affirmative side 
at the thirty-fourth meeting, with this question, " Re- 
solved, That females wield greater influence in society 
than males." The affirmative side won in this case as 
well as in the other. At the thirty-fifth meeting his name 
appears on the affirmative of the question (a very vital 
one at that time), "Resolved, That it would not be just 
and politic to liberate the slaves at this time." Again he 
was on the winning side. 

At the thirty-sixth meeting the name appears " U. 
Grant" on the affirmative side of the resolution, "That 
intemperance is a greater evil than war." 

At the thirty-seventh meeting " Mr. Grant " submitted 
the following resolution : " Resolved, That it be considered 
out of order for any member to speak on the opposite 
side to which he is placed." On this same evening he 
was elected, together with his friends A. H. Markland 
and W. Richeson, as a member of the committee. He 
also took part in the debate on the question, ''Resolved, 
That Socrates was right in not escaping when the prison 
doors were opened to him." He took the affirmative, and 
it was again the successful side. 

At the thirty-eighth meeting Ulysses Grant and E. M. 
Richeson were appointed to declaim at the next meeting. 



ULYSSES GOES TO BOARDING-SCHOOL 19 

He was again on the affirmative side of the debate on the 
question, " Resolved, That the writer deserves more praise 
than the orator." 

At the thirty-ninth meeting we find this significant 
hne : " First declaim by E. M. Richeson ; second, the roll 
being called, U. Grant was found to be absent." His 
name appears, however, on the negative side of the ques- 
tion, "That the writer deserves more praise than the 
orator." 

His name appears once more on the question, " Resolved, 
That Columbus deserves more praise for discovering 
America than Washington did for defending it." He took 
the negative side of this question. 

He was on the negative side, at the forty-second meet- 
ing, on the question, " Resolved, That America can boast of 
as great men as any other nation," March 27, 1837. 

Grant's name does not appear in the records of the 
debating society after March, 1837; the probabilities are 
that he returned home to put in the crop. 

There was a fine flavor about this society. It had a 
Latin motto, and debated the most weighty questions 
that the world has ever grappled with. It would seem 
from its record that Grant was a willing debater, but that 
he would rather pay six and a quarter cents fine than 
declaim. He was prominent in nine meetings, and, so far 
as we know, was an active member. 

However, his was not a nature that showed its hidden 
powers early, and he returned to Georgetown the next 
spring, not very much changed in looks or habit. He 
remained in Georgetown during the ensuing year, sharing 
the life and amusements of its best young people attend- 
ing the village school in the winter. 

Of indoor amusements there were few. The better 
class of people in the village took a serious, if not somber, 
view of life. Dancing was prohibited ; the fiddle was 
seldom heard. There were no musical instruments, and 
little singing, save of wailing hymns and droning psalms. 
As the walls were bare of ornament, so the souls of these 
people were without color of art or charm of poesy. 
Intelligence they had, and probity and power, but not 



20 LIFE OF GRANT 

grace. However, each year liberalized them appreciably, 
and the usual rustic social pleasures— bussing-bees, pars- 
ing-bees, speUing-bees, and the like— came in. 

Books were almost unknown, except volumes of ser- 
mons or religious essays. The school-books of the day 
were the English Reader, the Columbian Orator, Comstock's 
Philosophy, and Comstock's Arithmetic. The readers 
were filled with strenuously ethical essays, and tremen- 
dously bombastic orations, and very dry blank verse. It 
was all very far removed from southern Ohio colloquial- 
isms. On the bureau of the Grant sitting-room, it is re- 
membered, there stood a little cabinet containing possibly 
thirty books. What these were there is no tradition to 
tell. Presumably they were not of fine literature,* though 
Jesse Grant was naturally a lover of reading. Such books 
as came his way he read with care. 

He attended the Methodist Church, though hardly so 
devo ed in his religious life as his wife. Neither of them, 
however, could in their hearts completely sanction the 
barbarisms of the church of that day, which allowed of 
" shouting " and " frenzy." The " jerks " and " falling" were 
common when sinners were "smit by the Lord Almighty's 
power." Rehgion was not merely serious, it was tragic, in 
those days; the shadow of the Reformation still hung 
above it. " Hannah Grant was deeply religious, but very 
tolerant." She never interfered with any rational and 
proper amusement of her children. 

Ulysses, being a healthy-minded boy, recoiled from 
the frenzy of the " revival," and there is no evidence that 
it made any other impression upon him than one of fear 
or astonishment. His mother's gentle creed and spotless 
life, however, he felt inefTaceably. There is no record 
that either father or mother ever used any strong effort to 
induce him to join the church, though they insisted on 
his recognition of the Sabbath. His home life was pleas- 
ant. " I never received a harsh word or suffered an unjust 

* One of these was probably the famous old Weems " Life of Washing- 
ton," for Jesse Grant speaks of Ulysses reading the " Life of Washington" 
at about seven years of age. The lad was not much of a reader, however. 
" He cared more for horses than for books." 



ULYSSES GOES TO BOARDING-SCHOOL 21 

act from my father or mother," he once said; and it is a 
good deal to say of any parents. 

His sixteenth year was spent at home in Georgetown, 
beloved by his playmates, and happy in his activity with 
team and plow. His only bugbear was the beam-room, 
where the reeking hides are stretched and scraped. It 
is a repulsive place to a sensitive person, and Ulysses 
expected to be called soon to take his place there. He 
was growing toward a man's capacities,— indeed, he was 
more capable than most men already, — and the grim-lipped 
father was pondering upon the son's future. This Ulysses 
saw, but waited, as was his habit, for the other person to 
speak. 

One day they were short of hands in the tannery, and 
Jesse said : 

" Ulysses, you '11 have to go into the beam-room and 
help me to-day." 

Ulysses reluctantly followed, for thus far he had es- 
caped that work. As he walked beside his father he said : 

" Father, this tanning is not the kind of work I hke. 
I '11 work at it, though," he sturdily added, " if you wish 
me to, until I am twenty-one ; but you may depend upon 
it, I 'II never work a day longer at it after that." 

Jesse Grant, being a reasonable man, immediately 
replied : 

" My son, I don't want you to work at it now, if you 
don't like it, and don't mean to stick to it. I want you to 
work at whatever you like and intend to follow. Now, 
what do you think you would like?" 

" I 'd like to be a farmer, or a down-the-river trader, or 
get an education." He put the education last, in his mod- 
est way. 

The little farm on which Ulysses had been working in 
years past was rented out, and down-the-river trading 
hardly pleased the father, and times being very close, he 
did n't see how he could send the boy away to school. 
He thought of West Point, and said : 

"How would you like West Point? You know, the 
education is free there, and the government supports the 
cadets. How would you like to go there ? " 



22 LIFE OF GRANT 

" First-rate," Ulysses promptly replied.* 

His life thus far had been such as makes a boy older 
than his years, but it had not given him much in way of 
preparation for West Point, and it is probable that he did 
not really imagine himself a successful candidate for the 
appointment. He said little about the plan, for he had 
suffered too keenly from the ridicule of his playmates, 
who made a never-ending mock of his father's prophecy 
of his son's future greatness. There seems no doubt of 
this, though he never alluded to it.f Undoubtedly this 
constant derision added to his reticence and apparent 
dullness. 

Even at fifteen years of age he had a superstition that 
to retreat was fatal. When he set hand to any plan, or 
started upon any journey, he felt the necessity of going 
to the turn of the lane or to the end of the furrow. He 
was resolute and unafraid always, a boy to be trusted 
and counted upon — sturdy, capable of hard knocks. 
What he was in speech he was in grain. If he said, " I 
can do that," he not merely meant that he would try to 
do it, but also that he had thought his way to the suc- 
cessful end of the task. He was, in fact, an unusually 
determined and resourceful boy, as the stories of his neigh- 
bors show. Some of the good people of Georgetown, 
Ripley, and Batavia, however, went far in their attempt 
to show how very ordinary Ulysses Grant was. One 
measure of greatness they always had in these small 
towns — oratory, "gab." If a man was able to make a 
speech he became at once a man of mark. If a boy could 
declaim or debate well he was called brilliant ; conversely, 
one who could not was " ordinary." 

In the small minds of envious people, a boy of thirteen 
who could drive a team six hundred miles across country, 
and arrive safely ; who could load a wagon with heavy logs 
by his own mechanical ingenuity ; who insisted on solving 



* From a letter written to the New York "Ledger" by Jesse Grant in 1868. 
This does not agree with the account in the " Memoirs " of U. S. Grant, but it 
seems a very natural decision on the boy's part. 

t This ridicule is alluded to by W.T. Galbreath, Chilton White, Nelson Water- 
man, O. Eadwards, and other citizens of Brown County. 



ULYSSES GOES TO BOARDING-SCHOOL 23 

all mathematical problems himself; who never whispered, 
Dr lied, or swore, or quarreled ; who could train a horse to 
pace or trot at will; /who stood squarely upon his own 
knowledge of things, without resorting to trick or mere 
memory — such a boy was stupid, dull, and commonplace. 
That Ulysses was not showy or easily valued as a talker 
was true. His unusualness was in the balance of his 
character, in his poise, his native judgment, and in his 
knowlede-ft of things at first hand. 



-*«.:f?»*s:.ey<''-i 



CHAPTER IV 

ULYSSES ENTERS WEST POINT ACADEMif 

TO go to West Point was a great distinction in 1839, 
especially to the son of a Western tanner. It meant, 
supposedly, association with brilliant young men from all 
over the United States, assembled in a historic and most 
beautiful spot. It meant a free education in a good 
school, and also an honorable position under the govern- 
ment after graduation. Jesse Grant had in him the military 
heart of Captain Noah Grant. His strong, alert, aggres- 
sive nature assorted well with military affairs. Whether 
he intended that Ulysses should be educated for a soldier, 
however, is in doubt; perhaps the distinction of having 
his son appointed was secondary only to his feeling that 
the four years' schooling was to be free. 

Having decided upon the plan, however, he set to 
work to carry it out. The outlook was not, at the 
moment, promising. The congressional appointment was 
filled, and even if it had not been, he no longer felt 
assured of aid ; for a year or two before he had fallen into 
violent discussion of the banking question with his friend 
and neighbor, the Hon. Thomas L. Hamer, congressman 
from Brown County. They had succeeded in saying 
bitter things, and had parted in anger ; and they were no 
longer in correspondence, and did not shake hands when 
they met on the street,* though secretly each felt for the 
other the same high regard, and Mr. Hamer loved Ulysses 
as if he were a son, and held Hannah Grant in high esteem 
as a most noble and capable woman. 

During this estrangement Mr. Hamer appointed to the 

* "Memoirs." 
24 



ULYSSES ENTERS WEST POINT ACADEMY 25 

cadetship George Bartlett Bailey, a son of Dr. Bailey, 
who lived just across the street, and whose family was 
very intimate with the Grant household. The Bailey 
children used to lighten the labors of the Grant boys at 
the bark-mill, and the girls of the two families were daily 
playmates. 

Bart, as he was called, was a brilliant boy in all ways — 
quite the opposite of Ulysses. He could talk, he recited 
happily, and was considered just the proper youth to be 
sent to West Point ; and his appointment was heartily ap- 
plauded in the village. He was about the age of Ulysses. 

The records of his career are very brief. 

According to the adjutant's books, he reported at the 
academy in July, 1837. In February, 1838, he resigned, 
and entered a private school for a year's further prepara- 
tion. In July, 1838, he was reappointed, and registered. 

In February, 1839, he again resigned, and no reason 
appears. So far as the records show, he passed both 
January examinations, and struggled hard, apparently, to 
remain. In some mysterious way' he failed — probably 
because he detested the strict life and hard drill of the 
barracks. This much is certain: he made way for Ulysses 
Grant. "// was to be," the old adjutant's clerk said, with 
a mystic gleam in his eye. 

Young Bailey's secret resignation was not known in 
Georgetown at the time. He had not returned, and the 
family felt that the boy would be misunderstood, and had 
been at pains to keep the news from their neighbors. Mr. 
Grant, not being in communication with Congressman 
Hamer, supposed the place still filled. However, knowing 
that each senator also had the power to appoint a cadet, 
the determined father wrote to United States Senator 
Thomas Morris of Ohio, asking if he had a vacancy in his 
appointment. 

Senator Morris replied : " I have not. There being no 
application for the cadetship, I waived my right to appoint 
in favor of a member of Congress from Pennsylvania. But 
there is a vacancy in your own district, and doubtless Mr. 
Hamer, your representative, will fill it with your son."* 
* Richardson's " Life of Grant." 



26 LIFE OF GRANT 

This was news to Grant, and he immediately wrote to 
Mr. Hamer a polite and dignified letter : * 

Georgetown, February 19, 1839. 
To Hon. Thomas L. Hamer. 

Dear Sir: In consequence of a remark from Mr. Morris 
(senator from Ohio), I was induced to apply to the War De- 
partment, through him, for a cadet appointment for my son, H. 
Ulysses. A letter this morning received from the department 
informs me that your consent will be necessary to enable him to 
obtain the appointment. I have thought it advisable to consult 
you on the subject, and if you have no other person in view for 
the appointment, and feel willing to consent to the appointment 
of Ulysses, you will please signify that consent to the department. 
When I last wrote to Mr. Morris I referred him to you to recom- 
mend the young man, if that were necessary. 

Respectfully yours, 

Jesse R. Grant. 

(See recommendations.) 

Mr. Hamer generously did not allow the trouble 
between himself and Mr. Grant to interfere with the 
future of Ulysses, whom he thoroughly believed in. He 
promptly gave his indorsement, and Ulysses was ap- 
pointed. It is pleasant to add that by this manly act the 
Hamers and Grants were reunited. It may also be re- 
marked here that Jesse Grant was a remarkably fine 
letter-writer for those days. His letters are models of 
neatness and legibility, and not a little subtlety of expres- 
sion is in them. 

It is the tradition in Georgetown that when the news 
of Ulysses Grant's appointment came, the people were 
amazed. Some laughed, but others were indignant that 
such a clodpoll should be sent to be educated by the 
government. One man, meeting Mr. Grant on the street, 
said : 

" I hear Ulysses is appointed to West Point. Is that so ? " 

" Yes, sir." 

• This letter, hitherto unpublished, and one which Ulysses Grant saved, 
is valuable for several things. It fixes the boy's name, and the method 
of appointment. This letter is now in possession of the Hamer family. 
The Grants were unaware of its existence at the time the " Memoirs" ap- 
peared. 



ULYSSES ENTERS WEST POINT ACADEMY 2^] 

" Well, that 's a nice job ! Why did n't they appoint a 
boy that would be a credit to the district? " * 

There were many others who voiced the same feeling, 
though they had the grace not to snarl in the presence of 
the father. Ulysses doubtless agreed with them that it 
was a mistake, — he had no extravagant opinion of him- 
self at anytime, — but he faced the issue. He wanted to 
go, and he did not. The honor came with certain obvi- 
ous disadvantages. One of these was home-leaving. He 
loved his home. He was the most unmilitary of boys in 
a military age. The story of his grandfather's battles, 
sieges, and marches had seemingly made little impression 
upon him. The " trainings " and " general muster " of the 
militia had interested him rather less than the infrequent 
circuses of the day. He had small love for guns, could 
not bear to see things killed, and was neither a hunter nor 
a fighter. The people could not be much blamed for 
their feeling of resentment. To any one but the father 
and mother it seemed very much like a waste of govern- 
ment privileges. 

When the news of his appointment came Ulysses was 
living in Ripley. He had entered a special school, an 
academy, which was superintended by the Rev. William 
Taylor. It afforded the best instruction in the county, 
and was as good a school, undoubtedly, as could be found 
in any of the surrounding towns. 

Sixty years is a long time to keep distinctly in memory 
the form and face of another, but several of Grant's class- 
mates still live in Ripley, and remember him very well.f 
And the reports upon Ulysses' character are much more 
gracious than those of Georgetown. 

" Lys, or Lyssus, as we called him, boarded with R. M. 
Johnson, a tanner, whom Jesse Grant knew by way of 
business dealings. He was then about sixteen years old, 
and in appearance was short, stout, stubby, and hearty, but 
rather sluggish in mind and body. I was in the same class 

* This statement, made by Richardson, is corroborated by people in Rip- 
ley and Georgetown. It is all quite natural, and probably true. 

t I am indebted to Mr. Chambers Baird of Ripley for notes and letters 
bearing on Grant's life in Ripley. 



28 LIFE OF GRANT 

with him. We studied algebra together. He was excellent 
in mathematics. We studied Latin also, as beginners. He 
was not much of a talker — was rather quiet and serious. 
We all spent a good deal of time on the river in little 
boats. He played ball, and was good at it. When roused, 
was strong and active. He used to wrestle some, but I 
never knew him to fight, and he was never quarrelsome. 

" His habits were good. I don't remember of his using 
tobacco or liquor. He never talked about military life. 
He never went on trips or excursions with us, except in 
our boating or skating ; he was occupied with his studies. 
Everybody liked him, for he was so amiable and friendly 
and helpful. He was a good student, though we did 
not consider him a brilliant boy in studies. 

" Our text-books were the English Reader and its 
Sequel, Lindley Murray's Grammar, Haven's Speller 
and Definer, Comstock's Philosophy. Then, we had a 
geography with pictures of Indians and Chinese in it. I 
don't remember the name of it. It was a queer little 
book. Grant stood well in all his classes, but he was 
specially good in mathematics." 

Another classmate remembers him as a " heavy-made, 
good-looking boy, clever and social, modest and quiet. 
He was steady and studious. He was there for business. 
I belonged to the boys who made things lively, but Grant 
never took any hand in our mischief. He showed no 
Hking for military life, but just accepted his appointment, 
and went to work preparing for it. 

" I sat in the same seat with him the spring term. He 
was a good, steady boy, with no bad habits. I never saw 
him whipped or reprimanded." 

To one of the girls of the school he looked " awkward 
and countrified, and as if he did n't think much about how 
he looked. He was quiet and slow in everything he did." 

Another classmate adds a new observation to the 
meager list: " He was a great hand to ask questions. I 
think I have heard him ask a million. He seemed to 
want to get information and opinions from everybody. 
He said little himself, but he could answer questions, if you 
gave him time." This significant comment explains much 



ULYSSES ENTERS WEST POINT ACADEMY 29 

of Grant's great fund of facts. He absorbed information 
like a sponge. 

" He was always dressed in home-made butternut jeans. 
He nearly always carried a stick, and whittled most of his 
time. If he stopped to talk with any one, he always 
whittled on the stick he carried ; but he never made any- 
thing, like a great many boys do when they whittle." 

Ripley seemed to Ulysses to be almost a city in com- 
parison with Georgetown, and the mental atmosphere of 
the town was in sharp contrast. Georgetown was still 
distinctly Southern in its political sentiment, while Ripley 
was sharply Northern, even Puritan, in character. It was, 
indeed, to become in a few years the most famous station 
on the " underground railway " in all southern Ohio. 
It was the scene of the escape of Eliza, the " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" heroine; and the Rev. Rankin and his stalwart 
sons formed a host in themselves when the slave-hunters 
came trailing up the Ohio steeps, on whose summit the 
Rankin homestead perched like a robber's roost, capable 
of stern defense. That Ulysses was affected by these 
surroundings there can be no doubt. In a letter to a 
Ripley friend, long afterward, he said : " I remember with 
pleasure my winter in Ripley." 

He lived pleasantly as a member of the Johnson house- 
hold, and it is related of him that he taught Betty Osbon 
the cook, how to make buckwheat cakes, and that he took 
his " trick " at baking them of a morning. He was not in 
the society of girls much, though he took a shy delight in 
speech with them. 

In such wise he was living when the appointment to 
West Point came to change the gentle current of his life. 
There is no record that he showed exultation, or that 
he dwelt upon it in talk with his mates. He answered 
their questions quietly, but volunteered little. With his 
mother's impassive exterior he concealed the tremor of 
his heart, and prepared for his journey into the world as 
one would now go to arctic regions. 

There is a whisper to be heard, also, of a little maid liv- 
ing in those days whose face and voice had come to be 
very precious to Ulysses. This boyish love was of the 



30 LIFE OF GRANT 

sweetest and daintiest type — perhaps unspoken, on his 
part, for he feared the ridicule of his friends, and espe- 
cially of his elders. It is only a tradition now — a faint 
odor as of pressed roses and spice-pinks. No doubt, as 
the time approached for saying good-by, he keenly felt 
the sorrow of parting. 

However, he saw in prospect a splendid ride up the 
Ohio River in a steamboat, a trip over the mountains, 
and, better than all, a visit to the far cities of New York 
and Philadelphia, more splendid to him than his tongue 
could tell ; and, finally, he knew the inflexible purpose of 
his father ; therefore he set his face toward the East. 

His life had been active and happy ; he had lived 
securely, though meagerly ; he had experienced no strug- 
gle nor turbulence in his life in Georgetown ; and while he 
breathed quick with the thought of the great cities to be 
seen, he left Georgetown with regret. 

His mother said good-by in her singularly self-repres- 
sive manner, and Ulysses started out to take the stage to 
Ripley. As he went by the Bailey house Mrs. Bailey and 
her daughter came out to wish him good journey. 

It was a beautiful May day, just the most bewitching time 
of all the year in southern Ohio, and the girls met 
Ulysses on the soft green grass before the house. Mrs. 
Bailey, warm-hearted and impulsive, kissed him, and said 
tearfully: "Good-by, Ulysses." As she turned away, 
Ulysses, deeply moved, said wonderingly : " Why, Mrs, 
Bailey, my own mother did n't cry! " Yet there can be 
no question of his mother's love for him. And so he 
started off, with an ache in his heart. Going to West 
Point was not an unmixed delight. 

It is at this moment that we come upon the change of 
his name. Up to the start for West Point he had been 
Hiram Ulysses, or H. Ulysses Grant. He had been called 
" Useless " Grant because of his unusual middle name, 
and "Hug" because of the initials H. U. G., and his 
cousin, James Marshall, is an important witness right here. 
The young traveler required a trunk, and Thomas Walker, 
a local " genius," was the man to make it. He did so, 
and, to finish it off, he traced on the cover, in big brass 



ULYSSES ENTERS WEST POINT ACADEMY 3 1 

tacks, the initials H. U. G. Young Marshall went to help 
Ulysses to carry the new trunk home. Ulysses looked at 
the big glaring letters disapprovingly. " I won't have 
that so," he said. "It spells 'hug.' The boys would 
plague me about it." And he thereupon shifted his mid- 
dle name, and became Ulysses H. Grant, and so he went 
forth into the world. 

By his teaming and farming he had accumulated about 
one hundred dollars, which was a great deal of money for 
a boy of his age in those days, and he took a manly pride 
in knowing that he had earned so much of his expenses. 
Few boys of his age had done as well. 

In those days the saddle was the emblem of speed, and 
the canal-boat was tolerated as a passenger craft ; but to 
the boy it was all equally wonderful. Of the long journey 
by boat to Pittsburg, and by stage and canal to Philadel- 
phia, there is little record. An aunt on his mother's side, 
in Philadelphia, remembers him as he then appeared. She 
describes him as a rather awkward country lad, wearing 
plain, ill-fitting clothes, and large coarse shoes with toes as 
broad as the soles. 

He strolled about the streets in the fashion of the rural 
visitor, seeing all there was to be seen.* He enjoyed his 
visit thoroughly, that is known ; for he lingered, boy-fash- 
ion, to the last moment in Philadelphia and New York, 
and headed toward West Point only when he felt he must. 
The ride up the Hudson f was one of the grandest experi- 
ences of his life. He felt the historical side of it very 
strongly, as most Western boys do, and approached West 
Point with a thrill of exultation in his heart. It seemed 
to him one of nature's most tremendous upheavals — the 
water-gap, the wide river, and the dark hills bulging 
against the sky. 

He registered at Roe's Hotel, on the 26th of May, as 
" U. H. Grant," and the next day reported to the adjutant, 

• From an interview in the Philadelphia " Times," July, 1885. 
t Probably 

" On the proud steamer, long since gone awreck, 
The li. L. Stevens, fleet as a balloon." 

(From an old poem.) 



32 LIFE OF GRANT 

C. F. Smith, deposited forty-eight dollars, and signed his 
name " Ulysses Hiram Grant." His name as reported from 
Washington, however, was U. S. Grant, and arose in this 
way : The Hon. Thomas Hamer received the letter of Jesse 
Grant only the day before the close of his term, and being 
much hurried, sat down at once and wrote to Secretary of 
War Poinsett, asking for the appointment of his neigh- 
bor's son. He knew the boy's name to be Ulysses, and 
inferring that his middle name was Simpson, filled in 
the application so, and so it stood when Ulysses faced 
the adjutant. 

He asked to have it changed, but was told it was im- 
possible without the consent of the Secretary of War. 

" Very well," he said ; " I came here to enter the Mili- 
tary Academy, and enter I shall. An initial more or less 
does not matter."* He was known to the government 
thereafter as U. S. Grant. 

This being settled, he was given the " Book of Regu- 
lations," and sent across the area to the old South Barracks 
to report to the cadet officers. As he went he was greeted 
with derisive yells: "Does your mother know you 're 
out ? " " Oh, what an animal ! " " Who is your tailor ? " 
and other f witticisms. Missiles hurtled from the windows 
when no one in authority was in sight. 

At headquarters the cadet corporals took him in hand. 
He was told that the first duty of a soldier was to stand 
erect. He was ordered to throw out his chest and pull in 
his belly, and to fix his eyes on a tack driven in the wall. 
Then questions were asked — apparently harmless and quite 
polite questions. 

" Mr. Grant, what have you brought from home ? " 

Naturally he turned his head toward his questioner to 
reply. 

Fierce yells arose: 

" Keep your eyes to the front, sir! " He was told that 

* Richardson's " Life of Grant." 

t " Crossing the plain from the North Barrack windows 
Came boisterous shouts of welcome from within ; 
Sarcastic shrieks, as from a tribe of Mingoes, 
Assailed our hero with infernal din." 



^///y/ y. 






(^rii.*^^, <-/ 






.iju4r>i 






/i. 



%/f 



y * 



/^^. 







;>S^^^^ 



//^ 



^c^ti^r^ 












P'acsimile showing Grant's autograpli in the adjutant's record, West Point. 

his signature, " Ulysses Hiram Grant," was written the same day as the one " U. H. Grant," in the register at R 
S 29, 1839. 



/^« J&tUen ariU ,Jrtiei»sff liar. Me Jire^iuticnsjoT iia.JirUitary ^ca-elemyj 

_^'' ///£■ ^^nitt^i Siuie^, ami Me er^trv a/^Me officers a/>^gcf.tii^ t/rcr-rrte aeetf^diM- 
/» Me- '/-u/a.r ara^ t/ite^/irte ^Tl^f. 






-^"^^^^^x^-^ ^ ij^<^ /:i^i^ 



> 



.y^^y9^ 



Facsimile of Grant's certificate of enlistment. 

"his certificate was signed by Grant, September 14, 1839, after he had passed his examinations. It bears what is, so far 
int's earliest autograph as U. " S." Grant. By this time the mistake of Congressman Hamer in so naming him 
aartment had fixed that as his otificial designation. 



ULYSSES ENTERS WEST POINT ACADEMY 33 

the next duty of a cadet was to keep his eyes to the front, 
if the heavens fell. He was made to ** fin out " ; that is, 
to put his little fingers to the seams of his trousers, and to 
turn his palms to the front. He was told, with withering 
scorn, to " get a brace " on himself. 

" Drag in your chin! Draw in your belly ! Throw out 
your chest ! Now, you are to put ' Mr.' before every name, 
salute every officer, and do as you are told." His attention 
was called to other regulations in the same manner. 

After this exercise he was sent to the quartermaster for 
his outfit, which consisted of two blankets, pillow, water- 
pail, broom, a chair, etc. ; and he was required to carry all 
these things himself, on the handle of his broom, past the 
officers' quarters, past the howling cadets, while every 
mother's son of them said : 

" Hello, plebe ; how do you like it? " 

These belongings he was taught to pile and place in his 
'■com, under instruction of his room-mates. For two weeks 
he slept on the floor in the barracks, on two thin blankets. 
It was all literally camping under a roof. Ulysses and 
Rufus Ingalls were assigned to the upper floor of the old 
North Barracks (which long since gave place to new 
buildings) ; and here, in a bare, dreary room, he faced the 
four years of a cadet's life. " It was a wonderful time for 
us," says W. B. Franklin.* " We were all homesick and 
lonesome, and depressed by the hard manner of life. We 
knew no one, and were not in a condition to resent any 
impertinence or joke of the upper classmen." 

During this time he was drilled by " squad marches " 
in plebe drill in city clothing, and suffered all modes of 
" plebe jumping." He was forced to walk painfully 
straight, to perform various athletic exercises, and other- 
wise to prepare to be a " conditional cadet." 

During this time life was a burden and a weariness of the 
flesh. At last, when he had passed his preliminary ex- 
amination, he shucked out of his home-made clothes and 
into the skin-tight uniform,! and became a private soldier 

* General W. B. Franklin, who led his class during the four years, 
t " The clothes of the plebes in Grant's day were wonderful. They v/ctc 
of al! cuts, colors, and kinds. They came with the local peculiarities of Ohio, 



34 LIFE OF GRANT 

in the summer camp of the cadets. He went into train- 
ing as a cog in the machinery of an army. 

The entering class and the bulk of all the cadets were 
ranked as private soldiers with the pay of corporals. From 
the first or graduating class the commissioned officers were 
appointed, and consisted of four captains, sixteen lieuten- 
ants, a quartermaster, and a sergeant-major. These men 
were subject only to the instructors and to the regular 
army officers in charge. Promotions were made without 
reference to academic standing ; they were always for sol- 
dierly qualities. From the dullest plebe to the superin- 
tendent of the post was a regular series of commands, each 
succeeding higher rank with less numbers, until, like the 
glittering apex to the pyramid, the superintendent shone 
solitary and supreme. 

Tennessee, Maine, South Carolina, and Boston ; and when we lined up in 
squad drill we were as comical as the awkward squad at a spring training. 
We were not measured for uniforms till the authorities felt sure we were to 
stay."— General Franklin. 



CHAPTER V 

THE TRIALS OF A PLEBE 

FROM the democracy of small villages in the West, or 
from farms in the East, boys of seventeen or eighteen 
were brought face to face with this grim military despo- 
tism. It was a shock. Even at this time had grown up 
customs and traditions stronger than military regulations. 

In a half-jocular and half-ferocious way Grant was 
made to feel the power of those above him. The names 
by which he was designated show this. He was called a 
" thing," a " beast," an " animal," before his examinations. 
" Plebe " was his kingliest title during his first year. From 
the time he came in sight of the adjutant's office to the 
end of his first encampment he was not allowed to forget 
that he cumbered the earth. He was the victim of orders, 
of jests, of hootings, and of revilings. He was under com- 
mand of everybody, and, like a wastrel cat, had no place 
of refuge. 

When Ulysses shed his citizen's clothes, and got into 
the tight-fitting jacket and trousers, he felt that he had 
been stripped naked, with all his imperfection of limb and 
bust open to inspection and derision. He was forced to 
" brace " and " fin out " and salute " eyes front " every 
time he faced an officer or the upper-classmen. This 
absurd and painful contortion of body made him feel like 
a trussed turkey, and took all joy out of life. He was put 
through ridiculous actions at plebe drill. 

He was ordered into the rear rank when marching to 
and from meals, and the file-closer accosted him in a 
low snarl: " Get into line there, Mr. Grant! Watch out, 

35 



36 LIFE OF GRANT 

there! I '11 skin you if I see you do that again." Com- 
mands were hurled at him with all the venom (real or as- 
sumed) of piratical imprecation. No one quite laid hands 
upon him, and no one actually blasphemed, but the tone 
in which he was addressed was charged with the most 
desolating hate (apparently) which the human heart could 
conceive. 

The summer camp of cadets was precisely like an 
army camp in the face of an enemy. It was an army in 
miniature. 

A complete guard was posted, and no one was allowed 
to leave camp without a permit. Everywhere was elabo- 
rate and grim detail of procedure — detail enough to gov- 
ern the army of Russia or destroy it. Grant and his fel- 
low " animals " were at once bewildered by the salutes 
innumerable, the wheelings, marchings, roll-calls, policing 
calls, shouts of command real and mock. They were 
hustled into ranks with opprobrious mutterings of com- 
ment on the part of the corporals, whose delight was to 
send a man to the guard-house. 

They slept little the first night. The floor of the tent was 
hard, — harder even than the floor of the barracks, — and 
the mosquitos fed on each plebe with the spirit of the 
upper-classmen. Hardly had they fallen asleep when the 
vicious clamor of the reveille broke forth. Wild, fierce 
cries arose : " Fall in ! Get out of here ! Move ! What 
d' ye mean by that? Step lively, now! Fall in! " 

Thus assisted, they got into line for roll-call, with 
jackets fairly on, but with dreaming eyes. All about, the 
fog and chill of early dawn made the world unreal. Then 
the policing call brought more work, sweeping out and 
making ready for morning inspection. Ulysses kept a 
sharp eye on his neighbors, and so got through tolerably 
well, though once some one yelled ferociously : 

"You want to wake up there, Mr. Grant! " 

When the sick-call sounded, many a man felt like re- 
sponding who did not. 

Then came " peas upon a trencher " call, and every- 
body formed into line for breakfast, the plebes in the 
rear rank, of course, with palms thrown forward and 



THE TRIALS OF A PLEBE 37 

backs strained almost to breaking, the file-closer insulting 
them as they moved. 

Breakfast was as simple as a lumber-camp meal. The 
dining-hall was bare and the tables without cover. There 
were no napkins, and only common steel knives and forks, 
and the cups were heavy as bowls.* The fare was very 
bad, and the poor plebes " were assigned seats near the 
center, where it was hardest to get anything," and they 
commonly went away hungry from " hash," which was the 
morning dish. Sentinels in tall leather caps stood about 
the room while the rest ate. 

At last came the call: 

" Company A, rise." 

" Company D, rise." 

Once more the torture of the march back to the camp, 
whence no one could escape without permission. Each 
hour thereafter was filled with " calls " to duties, drills, 
and studies. There seemed to be no free hour. Mock 

* "The fare was very bad. West Point at that time was isolated from 
the world. It had no railways, and in winter no steamboats. There were, 
in fact, no farms very near. Breakfast was quite generally hashed beef, with 
coffee. Dinner, roast beef or boiled beef, with sometimes fish or mutton. 
Mutton v/as not a popular dish. We used to ' baa' like a sheep when we 
came into the dining-room. I think we had a table-cover, but I am not cer* 
tain. Of this I am certain : our forks were of the two-tined, bone-handled 
variety, and from long washing in hot, greasy water they had decomposed, 
and they gave a horrible smell which no old cadet can forget as long as tie 
lives. It was horrible. ' Te.i ' was largely tea, and very little besides, and 
the boys used to provide for it by sticking a fork into a big hunk of beef from 
the dinner and jabbing it fast under the table. This, when unperceived by 
the 'tack,' helped out the starvation form of 'tea.' 

" This thin fare led to all sorts of ' foraging on the enemy,' and men were 
detailed to steal from the dinner-table. We wore caps of morocco with a 
big flat top. We called them ' gig-tups,' and they held potatoes and salt- 
cellars and bread very comfortably. One man was detailed to steal bread, 
another meat, another salt and pepper, and so on. The sentinels who stood 
guard over our eating wore a sort of bell-crown cap of stiff leather, like 
those of Napoleon's body-guard ; and these caps could contain four quarts of 
boiled potatoes, and only add to the soldierly bearing of the sentinel. 

" This stuff we put into a pillow-case, and at night we beat it up with a 
bayonet, and cooked it over the grate, which was of anthracite coal and quite 
handy. Our dishes were slices of bread or toast. These were ' cadet hashes,' 
and were an institution in our day. No man, no cadet officer, in fact, was 
ever known to refuse an invitation to a cadet hash. I don't particularly recall 
Grant in this connection, but as he was a farmer boy, and a growing boy, 
I 've no doubt he accepted every possible chance to eat cadet hash." — 
W. B. Franklin. 



38 LIFE OF GRANT 

inspectors came by and rated the plebes. Third-class 
men, assuming authority, demanded salutes and service. 
Innocent and scared plebes were sent to the professor of 
mathematics for a half-dozen right lines, and on other fool's 
errands across the guard-line, only to be stopped and 
turned back with military promptness by the guard. They 
forgot to salute the officer of the day as he came by, and 
received more heart-bruising instruction. 

They were drilled incessantly by acting corporals 
ambitious for promotion, who thrust their noses almost 
into their victims' eyes, while they hissed and snarled out 
blasting phrases whose words were harmless, even polite. 
At morning inspection each scared plebe had his musket 
clawed from him by a stubby Httle martinet, who flung it 
back at his victim with intent (apparently) to smash his 
nose. 

"Where 's your bone-snapper, Mr. Grant? I 'U skin 
you for having that flint in. You want to peel your eye. 
What do you think this is — a picnic?" 

At noon roast-beef call, and more marching to dinner 
and marching back. More drill — always drill, and always 
cleaning up tent or gun. His clothes fitted so close he 
felt compressed ; he had no moment of ease in all the day. 
At last retreat sounded, and the gun boomed imperiously, 
and supper, even more welcome than dinner, was eaten. 
The night came, and sly deviltry broke loose. 

Some plebes escaped by inconspicuousness, but others 
were made to do absurd and useless tasks. Some were 
put on false guard, and made to walk all night. Deviling 
went on in the tents farthest from the officer of the day — 
quietly, of course, but with precision, nevertheless. Plebes 
were set to catching imaginary flies in some yearling's 
tent. Boat-races in wash-bowls were arranged. 

At 9:30 came the wailing, sweet music of tattoo and 
taps, and not even the mosquitos and the yearling or the 
hard boards beneath could keep the weary plebe awake. 

"There are few compensations during the first year; 
it is hard work, early rising, close application. You rise 
at 5 A. M. summers and 6 A. M. winters, and every hour 




View up the Hudson River from mortar- and siege-battery, West Point. 
From a photograph by Pach Brothers, New York. 




A " plebe " boat-race, West Point. 
From a photograph loaned by Lieutenant S. C. Hazzard, West Point. 



THE TRIALS OF A PLEBE 39 

is filled till 7 :30 P. M. You are obliged to scrub the floor 
and to make up your own bed, and keep your gun and 
room and uniform in perfect order, and also to be subject 
to the upper-classmen. 

" In the second year, however, you can bully the en- 
tering class, and swagger around doing corporal duty ; the 
third year you can bully two classes, and wear a red sash 
around your waist in parade to show you are a senior 
cadet officer; and in the fourth year you can do 'most 
anything you please — you can, in fact, do the very things 
you kept your subordinates from doing in the second year. 

" When you were a plebe you were obliged to stand up 
before the amanuensis like a trussed turkey with a towel 
under your wing, while he parboiled you for daring to be 
on earth at all — much more for asking leave to take a 
bath ; and you were obliged to dissemble, and say with 
marvelous meekness, ' Yes, sir," ' No, sir,' to his nobs, who 
sprawled at ease before his time-book. You were the fag- 
end of things— a loathsome ' beast.' But as a yearling 
these things changed." 

All this, or something like it, Ulysses Grant went 
through. No doubt he was able to escape much by reason 
of his quiet and obliging nature. Then, too, he speedily 
became a favorite of some of the more powerful men in 
the classes above him, and that smoothed his way a little. 
But he studied the tack, braced, finned out, policed camp, 
scrubbed floors on Saturday, was " skinned " for leaving 
the flint in his gun instead of the " bone-snapper," and 
endured all the educational abuse and discomfort which is 
the lot of the average plebe. 

In a letter to McKinstry Griffiths, a cousin in Batavia, 
he expressed his general feeling about the place— a fine, 
buoyant, well-expressed letter it is, too. It had a few 
misspelled words, but it is doubtful whether there were 
many more young men of seventeen in Georgetown who 
could have written so bright a letter.* 

* The original was long in the possession of Mr. Griffiths, and was first 
published in a Clermont County paper in 1885. It is now in the possession 
of C. F. Gunther. 



40 LIFE OF GRANT 

Military Academy, West Point, N. Y., 
September 22, 1839. 

Dear Coz : I was just thinking that you would be right glad 
to hear from one of your relations who is so far away as I am. 
So I have put away my algebra and French, and am going to 
tell you a long story about this prettiest of places, West Point. 
So far as it regards natural attractions it is decidedly the most 
beautiful place that I have ever seen. Here are hills and dales, 
rocks and river ; all pleasant to look upon. From the window 
near I can see the Hudson — that far-famed, that beautiful river, 
with its bosom studded with hundreds of snowy sails. 

Again, I look another way I can see Fort Putt, now frowning 
far above, a stern monument of a sterner age, which seems placed 
there on purpose to tell us of the glorious deeds of our fathers, 
and to bid us to remember their sufferings — to follow their ex- 
ample. 

In short, this is the best of places — the place of all places 
for an institution like this. I have not told you half its attrac- 
tions. Here is the house Washington used to live in— there 
Kosisuscko used to walk and think of his country and of ours. 
Over the river we are shown the dwelling-house of Arnold — that 
base and heartless traitor to his country and his God. I do 
love the place — it seems as though I could live here forever, if 
my friends would only come too. You might search the wide 
world over and then not find a better. Now all this sounds nice, 
very nice ; what a happy fellow you are, but I am not one to 
show false colors, or the brightest side of the picture, so I will 
tell you about some of the drawbacks. First, I slept for two 
months upon one single pair of blankets. Now this sounds 
romantic, and you may think it very easy ; but I tell you what, 
Coz, it is tremendous hard. 

Suppose you try it, by way of experiment, for a night or two. 
I am pretty sure that you would be perfecdy satisfied that it is 
no easy matter; but glad am I these things are over. We are 
now in our quarters. I have a splendid bed (mattress) and get 
along very well. Our pay is nominally about twenty-eight dol- 
lars a month, but we never see one cent of it. If we wish any- 
thing, from a shoe-string to a coat, we must go to the comman- 
dant of the post and get an order for it, or we cannot have it. 
We have tremendous long and hard lessons to get, in both French 
and algebra. I study hard and hope to get along so as to pass 
the examination in January. This examination is a hard one, 
they say ; but I am not frightened yet. If I am successful here 
you will not see me for two long years. It seems a long while 



THE TRIALS OF A PLEBE 4 1 

to me, but time passes off very fast. It seems but a few days 
smce I came here. It is because every hour has its duty, which 
must be performed. On the whole I like the place very much 
— so much that I would not go away on any account. The fact 
is, if a man graduates here, he is safe for life, let him go where 
he will. There is much to dislike, but more to hke. I mean to 
study hard and stay if it be possible ; if I cannot, very well, the 
world is wide. I have now been here about four months, and 
have not seen a single familiar face or spoken to a single lady. 
I wish some of the pretty girls of Bethel were here, just so 1 
might look at them. But fudge! confound the girls. I have 
seen great men, plenty of them. Let us see : General Scott, 
Mr. Van Buren, Secretary of War and Navy, Washington Irving, 
and lots of other big bugs. If I were to come home now with 
my uniform on, the way you would laugh at my appearance 
would be curious. My pants set as tight to my skin * as the bark 
to tree, and if I do not walk military, — that is, if I bend over 
quickly or run, — they are very apt to crack with a report as loud 
as a pistol. My coat must always be buttoned up tight to the 
chin. It is made of sheep's gray cloth, all covered with big round 
buttons. It makes one look very singular. If you were to see 
me at a distance, the first question you would ask would be, " Is 
that a fish or an animal? " You must give my very best love 
and respects to all my friends, particularly your brothers, uncles 
Ross and Samuel Simpson. You must also write me a long let- 
ter in rei)ly to this, and tell me about everything and everybody, 
including yourself. If you happen to see any of my folks, just 
tell them that I am happy, alive and well. 

I am truly your cousin and obedient servant, 

U. H. Grant. 

McKiNsTRY Griffith. 

N. B. In coming I stopped five days in Philadelphia with 
our friends. They are all well. Tell Grandmother Simpson that 
they always have expected to see her before, but have almost 
given up the idea now. They hope to hear from her often. 

U. H. Grant. 

I came near forgetting to tell you about our demerit or " black 
marks." They give a man one of these " black marks " for 
almost nothing, and if he gets two hundred a year they dismiss 
him. To show how easy one can get these, a man by the name 
of Grant, of this State, got eight of these " marks " for not going 

* The trousers were poorly made of white stuff that would shrink. 



42 LIFE OF GRANT 

to church. He was also put under arrest so he cannot leave his 
room perhaps for a month ; all this for not going to church. We 
are not only obliged to go to church, but must march there by 
companies. This is not republican. It is an Episcopal church. 
Contrary to the expectation of you and the rest of my Bethel 
friends, I have not been the least homesick. I would not go 
home on any account whatever. When I come home in two 
years (if I live), the way I shall astonish you natives will be 
curious. I hope you will not take me for a baboon. 

My best respects to Grandmother Simpson. I think often of 
her. I put this on the margin so that you will remember it 
better. I want you to show her this letter and all others that I 
may write to you, to her. I am going to write to some of my 
friends in Philadelphia soon. When they answer I shall write 
you again to tell you all about them, etc. 

Remember and write me very soon, for I want to hear much. 

This frank, gossipy letter is a revelation of the real boy 
behind his impassive mask of face. Whatever its faults, it 
is not the letter of a dullard. 

He was at once called " Sam " Grant. " I remember, 
as plain as if it were yesterday, Grant's first appearance 
among us," said Sherman. " I was three years ahead of 
him. I remember seeing his name on the paper in the 
hall on the bulletin-board, where all the names of the new- 
comers were posted. I ran my eye down the columns, 
and there saw ' U. S. Grant' A lot of us began to make 
up names to fit the initials. One said ' United States 
Grant.' Another ' Uncle Sam Grant.' A third said ' Sam 
Grant.' That name stuck to him." (An interview in July, 
1885, New York "Herald.") 

" He was a most unique-appearing youth," another 
witness testified.* 

He fell into ranks quietly and with little friction ; being 
so equable and obliging of temper, no one but a bully 
could find heart to impose upon him. He was small, 
also, and there was little excitement in "jumping" such a 
little fellow. He was a good boy here, as at home. He 
took little part in the sly deviltry of the class.f 

• Coppee, " Life of Grant." 

t " It was impossible to quarrel with Grant," said one who roomed with 
him for a year. " He never had a spat, I never knew him to fight." 



THE TRIALS OF A PLEBE 43 

A careful study of his page of demerits shows scarcely 
a single mark for any real offense against good conduct. 
His offenses are mainly " lates " and negligences. He was 
"late at church," "late at parade," "late at drill." He 
was a growing boy, and a little sluggish of a morning, no 
doubt. Once he sat down on his post between five and 
six in the morning; for this he received eight demerits. 
Twice in his second year as squad marcher he failed to 
report delinquencies in others, and received five demerits 
each time. His amiability led to this. Once he spoke 
disrespectfully to his superior officer on parade. The prov- 
ocation must have been very great to have led to this. 
The probabilities are the officer was mistaken. 

The life at the academy had this virtue — it was demo- 
cratic. All fared alike, so far as regulations could go. 
The son of slaveholding parents from Virginia had the 
same duties to perform as the tanner's son. " Each Satur- 
day it was down on your knees and scrub the floor. The 
barracks were dismal, barn-like structures with bare floors 
and very scanty furnishings. We had no servants at all. 
We had to carry water, make up our own beds, etc. There 
were no such luxuries as bath-rooms then. We had to 
pump our own water, and carry it up-stairs, whenever we 
found it necessary to take a bath. 

" I remember Grant well. He was a small fellow, 
active and muscular. His hair was a reddish brown, and 
his eyes gray-blue. We all liked him, and he took rank 
soon as a good mathematician and engineer, and as a 
capital horseman. He had no bad habits whatever, and 
was a great favorite, though not a brilliant fellow. 

" He could n't, or would n't, dance. He had no facility 
in conversation with the ladies, a total absence of ele- 
gance, and naturally showed off badly in contrast with 
the young Southern men, who prided themselves on being 
finished in the ways of the world." * 

He belonged decidedly to the plebeian side of the class, 
which was sharply divided on the line of elegance and 
savoir-faire, notwithstanding the democracy of the mili- 
tary regulations. " Socially the Southern men led. At 

* General D. M. Frost. 



44 LIFE OF GRANT 

the parties which were given occasionally in the dining- 
hall Grant had small part. I never knew Grant to attend 
a party. I don't suppose in all his first year he entered 
a private house." 

He was soon deeply immersed in certain of his studies. 
" A military life had no charms for me," he wrote, many 
years after,* " and I had not the faintest idea of staying in 
the army, even if I should be graduated, which I did not 
expect. The encampment which preceded the commence- 
ment of academic studies was very wearisome and unin- 
teresting. When the 28th of August came, the date for 
breaking up camp and going into barracks, I felt as though 
I had been at West Point always, and that if I stayed till 
graduation I would have to remain always." 

Undoubtedly the boy was homesick. Every wind that 
blew from the west was a reminder of home. Every let- 
ter from his cousins, his companions, from his father and 
mother, made him long for the little Ohio town. He had 
no realization of its squalor, its narrow bigotry. He knew 
only the boy's side of it. It was all poetry to him then. 
Its security, repose, and homely good will seemed the most 
desirable things in the world. 

During this time, before he had settled into place among 
his fellows, he read a great many novels of the standard 
sort, and was much benefited thereby. He wrote some 
capital letters home, telling of his life and reading. When 
the examination came in January he surprised himself by 
taking a very good place in the class, especially in mathe- 
matics and kindred studies. He was not a good linguist, 
as might be inferred, but was not positively disreputable, 
even in his French. He never quite reached the foot in 
anything. 

He was not resigned to being a soldier even after the 
January examination ; and when, in the midwinter, a bill 
was introduced in Congress to abolish the West Point 
Academy, he read the debates with absorbed interest, 
hoping it would be carried. " It never passed, and a year 
later I would have been sorry to have seen it succeed. My 

* " Personal Memoirs." This is the old man's comment. The boy's 
letter should be set over against it. 



THE TRIALS OF A PLEBE 45 

idea was then to get through the course, secure a detail 
for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics at the 
academy, and afterward obtain a permanent position in 
some respectable college; but circumstances always did 
shape my course different from my plans."* This was 
his peaceful and modest day-dream, into which, no doubt, 
some one of the young girls of Georgetown naturally 
drifted. 

He was not involved in any mischief at the academy, 
and there is no record that he ever went to Benny Haven's, 
though he may have done so. He was a good boy with- 
out being effeminate. The testimony of his companions — 
Quinby, Ingalls, Hamilton, Longstreet, Franklin — is con- 
current at this point : 

" He was a lad without guile. I never heard him utter 
a profane or vulgar word. He was a boy of good native 
ability, although by no means a hard student."! 

" So perfect was his sense of honor that in the numer- 
ous cabals which were often formed his name was never 
mentioned, for he never did anything which could be sub- 
ject for criticism or reproach. He soon became the most 
daring horseman in the academy." | 

He had a way of solving problems out of rule by the 
application of good hard sense, and Rufus Ingalls ends by 
saying: " When our school days were over, if the average 
opinion of the members of the class had been taken, every 
one would have said : ' There is Sam Grant; he is a splen- 
did fellow, a good, honest man against whom nothing can 
be said, and from whom everything may be expected.' " 

One of the keenest observers in his class saw more in 
him than his instructors. " He had the most scrupulous 
regard for truth. He never held his word light. He 
never said an untruthful word, even in jest. He was of a 
reflective mind, and at times very reticent and somber. 
Something seemed working deep down in his thought 
— things he knew as little about as we. There would be 

* " Personal Memoirs." 
t General Viele. 

t General James Longstreet, afterward an eminent and able general in 
the Confederate army. 



46 LIFE OF GRANT 

days, even weeks, at a time when he would be silent and 
somber — not morose. He was a cheerful man, and yet 
he had these moments when he seemed to feel some pre- 
monition of a great future, wondering what he was to do 
and what he was to become. He was moved by a very 
sincere motive to join the Dialectic Society, which was 
the only literary society we had. I did not belong, but 
Grant joined, while we were room-mates, with the aim to 
improve in his manner of expressing himself." And a 
certificate of membership, still extant, shows Grant to 
have been sufficiently well thought of by the members to 
have been elected its president.* 

All this does not mean that he was reserved or priggish. 
He was generally ready for any fun which did not involve 
deceit or lying. " He had a sense of humor," W. B. Frank- 
lin said. " No man can be called a ' good fellow,' as Grant 
was, and be a dullard." He was ready for a frolic. One 
night a chicken was being roasted in Grant's room, when 
a tack (tactical officer) was heard at the door. Grant hid 
the chicken and saucepan, and stood " attention " before 
the fire, with face quite impassive. The officer entered. 
Grant saluted. The officer walked around the room, look- 
ing very hard at the ceiling and walls, where nothing could 
be seen. " Mr. Grant, I think there is a peculiar smell in 
your room." 

" I 've noticed it, sir," replied Grant. 

" Be careful that something does not catch fire." 

" Thank you, sir," replied Grant, saluting. 

The two years wore away at last, and, with a very good 
record, he applied for a vacation, and secured it. 

* " Dialectic Society, 

" United States Military Academy. 

" Be it known that James Allen Hardie of the State of New York is entitled 
to all the rights and privileges of an honorary member of the Dialectic Society, 
' ' In Testimony of which we have caused to be hereunto affixed the seal of the 
Society and the signatures of our President and Secretary. 
" U. H. Grant, -. 

President. (^ Dated at the Hall of the Society, West 
" W. S. Hancock, r Point, June 20, 1843." 
Secretary. ) 

(From original, in possession of Mr. Joseph C. Hardie, Washington, D. C.) 



CHAPTER VI 

VACATION-TIME 

MEANWHILE, Grant's father had removed from 
Georgetown to Bethel, a small town a few miles 
nearer Cincinnati, and had established a fine tannery there. 

The cadets of that day were only allowed one furlough 
during the course of study, and Ulysses looked forward 
with great eagerness to his return to his parents and to 
his home. 

From Harrisburg homeward he had the company of 
his grandmother Simpson and Miss Kate Lowe, a very 
charming young lady from New York, who helped him 
bear in patience the long canal-boat ride to HoUidaysburg. 

It fell at the end of the lovely month of June, the way 
led through the exquisite scenery of Pennsylvania, and 
the boat abounded in material comforts. Grant himself, 
in speaking of the charms of this route, says: "With the 
comfortable packets, no mode of conveyance could be 
more pleasant, when time was not an object " ; and obvi- 
ously, in this case, time was no object. 

Miss Lowe considered Cadet Grant a fine-looking young 
man. He had clear eyes and good features; but was 
chiefly attractive on account of his splendid carriage and 
soldierly bearing. He was fastidious in dress, wearing 
always a blue sack-coat and white-duck trousers, of which 
he seemed to have a fresh pair for every day in the week. 
Though somewhat bashful, he was never awkward, and 
though rather reserved and reticent in company, he always 
had something to say. The strongest bond between them 
was their mutual love for riding, and horses and horse- 

47 



48 LIFE OF GRANT 

manship was a topic of unfailing interest, while current 
events and neighborhood gossip came in for their proper 
share. Polite literature was also a fruitful theme, for Grant 
at this time was a great lover of good novels — was given, 
indeed, to spending rather too much of his time at West 
Point devouring them, Bulwer, Cooper, Marryat, Scott, 
Lever, and Washington Irving taking their turn with many 
others. 

His most charming characterist'C, however, was his 
extreme courtesy ; he was full of delicate and kind atten- 
tions, not less to his aged grandmother than to the most 
fascinating young woman. 

It was late when he reached home — in the riotous luxr^ 
uriance of summer not yet past its freshness. The boy 
was nineteen, and full of the joy of life. The world seemed 
a good place to be in during those care-free weeks. The 
only pain in his life was the thought of the shortness of 
the play-spell. 

He went straight to his sweet and gentle mother, of 
course. " Why, Ulysses," she said, with a face shining 
with pride, " you 've grown much straighter and taller." 

" Yes, mother," he replied ; " they teach us to be erect." 

The father's pride in his boy was boundless. He pro- 
vided him with a fine young colt to ride, and after a day 
at home, he rode like a pursued Sioux over to George- 
town, to see the girls and boys of his acquaintance. It is 
remembered that he used to drive over " like Jehu, and 
load in some old friend, and go oflf a-whizzin' ! 

One of the girls he hastened to see was Miss Mary King. 
To her he had significantly sent one of his best drawings 
from West Point. The drawing is signed " U. H. Grant." 
These things give color to the tradition that Miss King 
was the boyhood sweetheart who had made West Point 
seem a long way ofT. Of her little can be learned save 
that she had accepted another wooer. It is not remem- 
bered that Ulysses grew wan with grief. Perhaps Miss 
Lowe was a helpful influence. 

The Grant home in Bethel was a comfortable brick 
house similar to the home in Georgetown ; but the tan- 
nery was much more extensive. The village itself was 



■^WP^W" 



«"fllw>'% ' '»)«.< 





AJL 



1 A sketcli made by Grant about the tune lie was at \\ c.^l. I'omt. 

Reproduced by permission from the original drawing, owned by C. F. Gunther, Chicago, and now first pubhshed. 




A water-color sketch made by Grant about the time he was at West Point, 
eproduced by permission from the original, owned by Mrs. Rotherey, Newark, New Jersey, and now first publishec 



VACATION -TIME 49 

hardly more than a street lined with a dozen buildings, 
whose broadsides stood close to the narrow walks — a style 
of architecture not Northern, nor Southern, nor Western, 
but partaking of the characteristics of them all, in the 
manner of Georgetown and Batavia. Like Georgetown, 
it had also been hewn out of the forest, and had no river 
connection. 

The people commented freely on the young cadet's 
improved manners, and the Georgetown " Gravel Club," 
which met under the trees before the court-house door, 
admitted that he might make a decent mark for muskets, 
after all. They did this grudgingly, to be sure ; for wise- 
acres in a small town are very loath to change their 
views. They arrogat^ to themselves the infallibility of 
gods and popes. Sitting on counters and nail-kegs as 
upon thrones, they still continued to direct the destiny of 
the world, including that of Cadet Grant. 

" His neat undress uniform, his erect carriage, pleasant 
face, and his easy and graceful horsemanship, won hearty 
commendation from the unprejudiced. The young cadet 
made many visits to the home of John W. Lowe, a mem- 
ber of the bar. in whose home Miss Kate Lowe was 
ctaying." 

With rides and walks with the girls, and games with the 
boys, the vacation passed. It was all too sorrowfully 
short, and the young cadet said good-by with a sigh of 
pain. However, he was young, and had attached himself 
to his chums, Rufus Ingalls, Charles Hamilton, and others 
of the most promising of his classmates, and he soon 
found his heart as light and his mind as untroubled as 
before. 

" I enjoyed this vacation beyond any other period of 
my hfe," he said afterward; and the words must be taken 
at their utmost value, for Ulysses Grant seldom allowed 
himself even this much in the way of emotional expression. 



CHAPTER VU 

LAST DAYS AT WEST POINT 

I'O return to the barrack life after the glorious free- 
dom of the vacation was like returning to prison. 
Again the insistent snarl of the drum summoned to roll- 
call. The bugle, the morning gun, the staccato com- 
mands of officers, brought a routine which clamped like 
an iron band;* but this wore off in a few days, and the 
pleasant things reasserted their charm. 

It had its compensations, this life, which got hold ot 
Cadet Grant at last. It was a healthful life, this cease- 
less marching to and fro, this vigorous, regular routine. 
The Instruction was good, the exercise well timed and 
well considered, and the cadets were all markedly grace- 
ful, strong, and well. It had its beautiful side, too. The 
surroundings of the place are noble, and the sun rises and 
sets in unspeakable glory of color. The shaven green ot 
the lawn, the gleam of tents, the swing of columns, the 
ripple of pliant snow-white trousers beneath a band ot 
blue coats, the crash of horn and cymbals, the clamor and 
squeal of drum and fife, the boom of sunset gun, the rum- 
ble and jar of wheeling artillery — all these sounds and pic- 
tures came to be keen pleasures to divide the dull gray 
hours of hard study with moments of purple and gold. 

The cavalry drill, which was added in 1841, undoubtedly 
helped Cadet Grant to endure these last years. Every 
morning of the autumn, while the maples turned from 
green to gold and orange and scarlet, the battalion wheeled 

• This is made evident by the increase of demerit marks during the first 
month after vacation. 

50 



LAST DAYS AT WEST POINT 51 

over the parade-ground. The call of the bugles, the thrill- 
ing commands, the reel of the horses, the clang of sabers, 
the splendid voices of the commanders, the drumming of 
hoofs, the swift swing into perfect alignment, — all these 
movements helped him to forget his homesickness, and 
gave him appetite for dinner and what came after. 

A deeper effect was beginning to appear. He felt some 
stirrings of ambition to be a military leader. They were 
not very pronounced, but sufficiently definite to enable 
him to write afterward : 

" In fact, I regarded General Scott and Captain C. F. 
Smith, the commandant of cadets, as the two men most to 
be envied in the nation." 

He concluded, at length, to remain in the army, and 
wished to enter the cavalry — moved thereto, of course, by 
his love of horses ; but as there was only one regiment of 
cavalry in the army at that time, the chance for a position 
in the cavalry was not good. Nevertheless, at graduation 
he indicated his first choice, the cavalry, and his second 
choice, the Fourth Infantry. 

He was brevetted second lieutenant of the Fourth 
Infantry, and ordered to report to his command at Jefferson 
Barracks, St. Louis, after a short vacation. 

The entire army of the United States at that time 
numbered less than eight thousand men, and the supply 
of officers then, as now, was embarrassingly large. It was 
the custom, therefore, to brevet graduates second lieu- 
tenant. 

He graduated the twenty-first in a roll of thirty-nine, 
with a fair record in all things, a good record in mathematics 
and engineering, and a remarkable record as horseman. 
More than a hundred had entered with him, but one by one 
they had dropped out till but thirty-nine remained. Rid- 
ing his horse York, he leaped a bar five feet six and a 
half inches high — a mark, it is said, which has never been 
surpassed. 

"One afternoon in June, 1843, while I was at West 
Point a candidate for admission to the Military Academy, 
I wandered into the riding-hall, where the members of the 
graduating class were going through their final mounted 



52 LIFE OF GRANT 

exercises before Major Richard Delafield, the distinguished 
engineer (then superintendent), the academic board, and a 
large assemblage of spectators. 

" When the regular services were completed, the class, 
still mounted, was formed in line through the center of 
the hall. The riding-master placed the leaping-bar higher 
than a man's head, and called out, ' Cadet Grant!' 

" A clean-faced, slender young fellow, weighing about 
one hundred and twenty pounds, dashed from the ranks on 
a powerfully built chestnut-sorrel horse, and galloped down 
the opposite side of the hall. As he turned at the farther 
end, and came into the straight stretch across which the bar 
was placed, the horse increased his pace and measured his 
strides for the great leap before him, bounded into the air, 
and cleared the bar, carrying his rider as if man and beast 
were welded together. The spectators were breathless. 

" ' Very well done, sir,' growled old Herschberger, the 
riding-master, and the class was dismissed." * 

When spoken to about this feat, he was accustomed to 
smile a little bashfully, and retreat by saying : " Yes ; York 
was a wonderfully good horse." 

Apparently Grant remained markedly unmilitary 
throughout the four years' course. He served as a private 
throughout the first two years of his course. During the 
third year he was made sergeant, but was dropped (pro- 
motions at that time were made for soldierly qualities, 
and had no exact relation to excellence in studies), and 
during the fourth year he served again as private. He 
had no real heart in the military side of the life. Its 
never-ending salutes, reprimands, drills, and parades wore 
upon him. 

" I did not take to my studies with avidity ; in fact, I 
rarely read over a lesson the second time during the entire 
cadetship. I devoted m.ore time to reading books from 
the library than to books relating to the course of studies." f 

" Notwithstanding this modest statement, Cadet Grant 
stood well in his studies. The first year he took up French 

* James B. Frye, afterward general in the Civil War ; Captain L. Shields 
and General E. G. Viele also speak of Grant's remarkable horsemanship, 
t "Personal Memoirs," 



LAST DAYS AT WEST POINT 53 

and mathematics, and though the course was severe, in- 
cluding algebra, geometry, trigonometry, application of 
algebra to geometry, etc., he stood fifteenth in a class of 
sixty in mathematics, and forty-ninth in French, and 
twenty-seventh in order of general merit. The second 
year he climbed three points in general merit, and stood 
twenty-fourth in a class of fifty-three. He ranked Fred- 
erick Steele and Ru^^'is Ingalls, and stood tenth in mathe- 
matics and twenty-third in drawing, but was below the 
center in ethics and French. In his third year he rose 
in his drawing to nineteen, and was twenty-second in 
chemistry and fifteenth in philosophy, which was a very 
good S'^anaing indeed. He rose to twenty in general 
merit, sixteen in engineering, seventeen in mineralogy and 
geology, but was a little below the average in ethics and 
artillery and infantry practice." 

In general, it may be said that he left the academy 
with a good average record as a student and a very high 
record as a man. 

" He betrayed no trust, falsified no word, violated no 
rights, manifested no tyranny, sought no personal aggran- 
dizement, complained of no hardships, displayed no jeal- 
ousy, oppressed no subordinate, and was ever known for 
his humanity, sagacity, courage, and honor." 

These were negative virtues, it is true. On the posi- 
tive side little could be said at that time. He was not a 
man of obvious powers. He left the gate at West Point 
small, obscure, poor, and without political friends or in- 
fluential relatives,* a kind, obliging, clean-lipped, good- 
hearted country boy, who could ride a horse over a picket- 
fence or across a tight rope. 

To his old playmates in Georgetown he seemed a self- 
reliant, well-balanced young soldier. The training had 
done much for the shy lad. 

* It is reported that two of the teachers, in talking over the class, asked 
each other, " Who is the smartest man in the class? " and one replied, in his 
turn, " Sam Grant." This, however, is of the order oi post facto prophecy. 



CHAPTER Vin 

grant's first command 

HE spent his furlough in Bethel and Georgetown. 
During his stay he was invited by the officers of 
the militia to drill the troops at " general muster," which 
took place at Russelsville during August of 1844, and this 
was his first opportunity of command. 

These semiannual musterings of the possible soldiery 
of the country had come to be a jolly farce. It was 
ordered by State law twice each year, however, and so it 
was made the most of. 

The troops were called the " Corn-stalk Brigade " be- 
cause of their lack of guns and uniforms. Occasionally 
some wag would appear with a broomstick or a stalk of 
corn in place of musket. And discipline was not coercive 
enough, nor command military enough, to make general 
muster other than a diversion to which the people as- 
sembled to trade horses, drink cider, and eat gingerbread, 
which was considered in the light of ice-cream and candy 
by the young fellows and their girls. 

On that day the people came on horseback and afoot 
from every nook of the country with such soldierly be- 
longings as they had — guns of all eras, and coats and caps 
of all sorts and colors. The officers, pompous in martial 
toggery, woofed and grunted and howled their orders at 
the stragghng files for an hour or two, then lay off to 
lunch and talk politics, while the men traded horses and 
settled any odd scores they might have on hand by fist- 
and-face encounters ; and at sundown every one went home, 
conscious of a duty well done and a day well spent. 

54 



[' 




1- • ^. (.ram as Brevet Second Lieutenant, at;e _m years, 
'laken in Cincinnati in 1843, jusi after graduation from West Point. 



r" 





U. S. Grant as Captain, while stationed at Sacket's Harbor, 

New York, 1849, age 27 years. 

From a very .small miniature. 



grant's first command 55 

In 1844, however, the Mexican War excitement was 
rising, and the turnout was naturally larger and the soldiers 
more serious of mind ; then, too, it was known that Cadet 
Grant was to be present to drill the troops, and that 
added to the interest. 

The scene impressed itself ineffaceably on certain of 
young Grant's playmates, because it seemed wonderful, 
even revolutionary, to see a young lad such as Cadet 
Grant looked, ordering the pompous old officers about. 
" He looked very young, very slender, and very pale." 

" He was dressed in a long blue coat with big epaulets 
and big brass buttons, and his trousers seemed to be 
white, though they may have been a light gray. He 
wore a cap, and a red sash around his waist, and he rode 
his horse in fine style." He handled his men in a way to 
make his former detractors marvel. 

" I was particularly struck with his voice — that is, his 
way of using it. The old men barked out their com- 
mands ; you could n't tell what they said ; noise seemed 
to be their idea of command. But Grant's voice was 
clear and calm, and cut across the parade-ground with 
great precision. It was rather high in pitch, but it was 
trained; I could tell that, though I was only a boy." 

This was the young soldier's first command, and must 
have been one of his red-letter days. Being human, no 
doubt he rejoiced in showing his old neighbors that they 
had not properly estimated him, and being young, he en- 
joyed the shy glances of admiration which the girls gave 
him as he passed in his resplendent uniform. 

It must have been after this that he fell in with the 
unwashed, one-gallused Cincinnati street gamin who 
trotted by his side long enough to pipe these mystic 
words, worthy of Gavroche : 

"Soldier, will you work? No, sirree ! I '11 sell my 
shirt first." 

His cutting sarcasm gave Ulysses such a distaste of his 
uniform that thenceforth he shunned the slightest display 
of his rank.* 

At this time he was a small young fellow, a little over 

» " Personal Memoirs." 



56 LIFE OF GRANT 

five feet seven inches in height, and weighing but one 
hundred and seventeen pounds, and, according to his first 
portrait, his face was strongly Hned, Hke his father's, with 
fine, straight nose and square jaws. A pleasant and 
shrewd face it was, with a twinkle in the gray-blue eyes 
when amused, and a comical twist in the long, flexible 
lips when smiling. His hair was a sandy brown, and his 
complexion still inclined to freckles. His early sweetheart 
had married another man, and his second had not returned 
his love, but no deep sorrow appears on his face. 

His ambitions were not inordinate. He still held to 
the idea of getting a place to teach in some quiet place, 
with a salary sufficient to support a wife. He 'had no 
corrupting desire for glory — for personal aggrandizement. 
He had no somber and lurid dreams of conquest. He 
did not look away to Mexico or Peru as a field for a 
sudden rise to sole and splendid command. He had in 
mind a little wooden cottage somewhere under the maples, 
with a small woman to care for the home, and to meet him 
at the door as he returned from his daily duties as pro- 
fessor of mathematics in Blank College. All this is very 
little to hope for, but he seems to have given it a great 
deal of troubled thought. The awful splendor of General 
Scott's position he never once lifted his eyes to. Even 
that of his instructor, Captain C. F. Smith, seemed unat- 
tainable security and glory. 

" The small man with the big epaulets," under the 
spell of a street-boy's derision, had even lost all pleasure 
in his uniform, and his civilian's coat was a pleasurable 
relief. In such unmilitary mood he took his way to his 
regiment in the " far West." 



CHAPTER IX 

grant's courtship 

ABOUT ten miles south of the city of St. Louis, and on 
l\. a fine height which overlooks the oily tan-colored 
flood of the Mississippi River, is set the Jefferson Barracks, 
of early Western history. New buildings have been 
added from time to time, and the trees have grown; but 
the old buildings, set around the square of sward, are 
quite untouched by change; they look much as they did 
in 1843, when Ulysses Grant joined the army there, and 
entered upon his duties as brevet second lieutenant of the 
Fourth Infantry. 

They are of whitewashed stone, with galleries and gener- 
ous roofs, in the Southern manner. At the eastern end of 
the campus is set the flagstaflF, and under it the brass 
cannon which serves as evening gun. Across the river 
are wooded banks, and to the north the city of St. Louis 
shows vaguely in the smoke and haze. On the river 
below steamboats ply with shining paddle-wheels which 
make no noise. There is a singular air of peace and 
repose and gentle life within this square, which rings at 
intervals with the imperious commands of the bugle. All 
fear, all anxiety concerning life, seems left behind. The 
men move quietly about, the robins tug at worms on the 
lawn, and the blue-jay flying across mocks thj bugle's 
note with saucy unconcern. 

It was a large garrison in the early forties, for St. Louis 
was then a far- Western town and a most important mili- 
tary base. No less than sixteen companies of infantry 
were stationed there when Lieutenant Grant was assigned 

57 



58 LIFE OF GRANT 

first duty after his graduation from West Point. Colonel 
Stephen Kearney commanded the post, and commanded it 
reasonably ; and the young lieutenant found army life very 
agreeable. The routine was not severe, and though his 
room was bare and the life monotonous, yet it had com- 
pensating charms. For diversion, men and officers alike 
looked away to St. Louis. Between roll-calls and drills 
the officers were permitted to enjoy themselves without 
inquisitorial search inco their p»aiij a^id motives. 

With his mind still set on securing a situation as teacher, 
Ulysses set to work to do some studying and reading. 
Possibly this resolution kept him out of the degenerating 
tendency of the routine life which makes toward indiffer- 
entism and mechanical action. No one has yet uttered a 
word of criticism of his life there.* 

" He became a general favorite at once, and his name 
was never connected with anything which called for re- 
buke or reproach," said his classmate Longstreet. " The 
routine was strict enough to account for every man and 
to fill his time pretty thoroughly. It was about like that 
at West Point, with thorough daily drill ; for the Mexican 
War was threatening." 

From the barracks an irregular road led to the north- 
west toward Georgetown, intersecting the famous Gravois 
road from St. Louis at a point about nine miles outside 
of the city. This byway came to be a familiar one to 
Ulysses Grant, for the father of his classmate and room- 
mate, F. T. Dent, lived " out on the Gravois road," a mile 
or so beyond its intersection with the barrack road. 

" Colonel " Dent, as he was called, was a man of some 
means and social standing in the neighborhood. He held 
a large tract of valuable land, and owned a bunch of negro 
men and women, and was living in simple planter fashion 
at the time his son Fred returned from West Point. 

* Lieutenant Grant was assigned first duty after his graduation from West 
Point. As he marched up to the guard-house the first time as supernumerary 
officer, ruddy-cheeked, square of shoulders, a crazy but harmless soldier who 
was confined in the guard-house said, with an inflection as mystical as that 
used by the street-urchin in Cincinnati : " Ah, there you go, like a young bear. 
All your troubles before you." Lieutenant Grant gave no sign of hearing, 
but no doubt thought that all his honors were before him also. 




The liouse in whicli Clrant went to school at Georgetown, Ohio. 




" White Haven," the Dent homestead near St. Louis, Missouri. 



GRANT'S COURTSHIP 59 

Young Dent was intimate enough with Ulysses Grant to 
visit him at his home in Bethel, and also to invite him to 
visit " White Haven," as the elder Dent rather grandiosely- 
called his farm-house. Before Ulysses was able to make 
this visit, however, young Dent was forced to report for 
duty in a regiment stationed farther west, and had not the 
pleasure of introducing his room-mate to his family. 

The Dent household contained three young girls, Emma, 
Julia, and Ellen. Julia, a girl of seventeen, was visiting in 
St. Louis, and Lieutenant Grant, upon making his first 
vr'si^, (hd rot meet her, though he found the house filled 
with young pecjde. Besides the two younger sisters, there 
were also two brothers, Lewis and Renshaw. 

Mr. Grant enjoyed his visits to White Haven even 
before Miss Julia returned from St. Louis; but afterward 
he very frequently rode out there, clattering furiously up 
the road in impetuous, boyish fashion, for between drills 
and roll-calls was brief time to make a visit in, especially 
upon a young lady whose home was several miles away. 

White Haven was a plain farm-house with two small- 
ish rooms and a hall in the main part below. It had also 
an addition to the west, and a negro cabin and kitchen to 
the rear. It was imposing by reason of its galleries, its 
position, and the beautiful surroundings it overlooked. 
It was not so overawing to the young Ohioan as the im- 
perious " colonel " himself, who was at this time a middle- 
aged man of large frame and irascible temperament, quite 
the ideal in manner of a gentleman of the plantation — a 
man who commanded labor, but did not act with it. 

According to local testimony. Dent took small interest 
in Ulysses Grant, who was a plain, inexpressive youth, 
quite commonplace in all discernible ways. Mrs. Dent, 
on the contrary, it is said, liked young Grant at once. 
Her keen sense apprehended in him honesty, loyalty, and 
a certain refinement, as well as capacity. Her greetings 
continued to be cordial even after it appeared that her 
daughter Julia was wholly committed to the young Heu- 
tenant's future weal or woe. 

Georgetown was the back country then. St. Louis was 
ten miles away over a bad road, and its pleasures quite 



6o LIFE OF GRANT 

out of reach in winter; therefore the Dent family took 
active part in the dances, parties, and " bees " of the 
neighbors. At the Longs, the Fentons, the Sappingtons, 
the young people gathered of evenings to dance and sing, 
and in these merrymakings Grant and some of his fellow- 
officers from the barracks were frequent participants. 
Besides these, there were long rides along the woods roads, 
and evenings spent quietly at home in White Haven. 
These were beautiful days, with little to worry about and 
nothing to regret. Within the barracks all was peaceful. 
Across the lovely hills and through secluded wooded lanes 
rhe lovers rode without previbioii cl troubJe. 



CHAPTER X 

CALL TO WAR 

BUT outside, in the nation at large, were signs of a 
gathering storm. The one political issue which 
overshadowed all others was the question of the annexa- 
tion of Texas. It was, in fact, the slavery problem in a 
new form. The pro-slavery leaders felt the need of 
acquiring more territory with which to hold in check the 
growing power of the antislavery States ; the Northwest 
was coming each year to be stronger and to be also more 
pronouncedly abolitionist in feeling. The inevitable con- 
flict had really begun, under a masked campaign. 

Into the Mexican territory of Texas, under cover of indi- 
vidual colonization, settlement, mainly from the South, had 
been going on for years by invitation of the unsuspect- 
ing Mexicans. The planters of Louisiana and Mississippi 
took not merely their ideas of government, but their slaves, 
with them. 

These colonists, as they grew in power, paid small heed 
to the far-away and revolution-distracted Mexican govern- 
ment. They came at last to the point of setting up an 
independent government of their own, the " Lone Star 
Republic," within the territory of the Mexicans; and then 
the United States was suddenly made aware of the doings 
of this distant southwest colony, and was forced to take 
action upon the whole contention. 

Texas seceded from Mexico, won its battles over Santa 
Ana, the Mexican President, in 1836, and offered itself to 
the United States and was accepted by Congress in 1845. 
It was conceivable to the pro-slavery men that out of this 

61 



62 LIFE OF GRANT 

enormous territory senatorial districts might appear to 
keep the balance of power in the South during the titanic 
struggle which the fore-enhghtened now plainly saw 
coming. Pending this acceptance by the United States, 
desultory warfare and raiding by both parties was going 
on between the frontiers, and it was ostensibly to prevent 
filibustering into Texas that General Zachary Taylor, com- 
mander of the Southwest MiHtary District, was ordered 
to occupy the disputed territory lying between the Rio 
Grande and Nueces rivers. 

It was not much to fight for, this land. In fact, it re- 
mains to-day practically unused — a region of drought, 
covered with mesquit and cactus, with only here and there 
a settler lost in the chaparral. However, anything will do 
as a pretext when a fight is desired. 

Thus while Lieutenant Grant was in the midst of his 
most beautiful year of love and comradeship the national 
leaders were plotting for party aggrandizement and, sec- 
ondly, for national aggression. 

Up to this time the young soldier had not taken any 
very vital interest in politics, and, still intent on leaving 
the army, had written to Professor Church, his old in- 
structor at West Point, asking to be detailed for the posi- 
tion of assistant teacher of mathematics. To this letter 
Professor Church had replied expressing willingness to 
make the request; and being much encouraged. Lieuten- 
ant Grant had been applying himself to the necessary 
books to fit himself for the desired position. 

His life was a round of pleasant things — the peaceful 
garrison life, the dashing rides up the forest road, the 
simple, hearty greetings of the people at Georgetown, 
and, above all, the presence of a little woman to share 
hopes and pleasures with. War was a great way off, and 
Texas a word of vague significance and still vaguer geog- 
raphy. 

However, the order came to the Fourth Infantry to 
break camp and join the Second Dragoons at Fort Jessup 
in Louisiana. This order also brought to Lieutenant 
Grant a realizing sense of his dependence upon the good 
will of Miss Julia Dent. He had just obtained a twenty- 



CALL TO WAR 63 

day leave of absence to visit Ohio when the order came 
to the barracks. He was, in fact, on the road, and there 
was no way of recalling him, save by letter; so he jour- 
neyed on without worry. 

His worry began when a letter reached him telling him 
his regiment was about to move. He had not arrived at 
a definite understanding with Miss Dent, being content to 
meet her day by day ; but now zva)' was threatening, and 
it seemed of paramount necessity that he should know 
precisely her feeling toward him. He returned in express 
haste to Jefferson Barracks. Upon arrival, he saddled 
his horse and rode immediately to Gravois. 

He arrived at White Haven on the day of a wedding 
among friends of the Dents, and all things conspired to 
make him very determined and more than usually serious. 

He found Miss Julia in a carriage, just starting to the 
wedding with her brother. He persuaded the brother to 
take his horse, and so won a place in a single-seated 
carriage with Miss Julia, and they started. 

He was unusually silent at first. 

Now it chanced that heavy rains had swollen the creek 
to abnormal size, and the frail bridge was nearly sub- 
merged with a wild and turbid flood. As they ap- 
proached it Miss Dent grew apprehensive, and said: 

" Are you sure it is all right? " 

" Oh, yes ; it 's all right," he replied, man-fashion to 
womankind. 

" Well, now, Ulysses, I 'm going to cling to you if we 
go down," Miss Dent said. 

" We won't go down," he replied, and drove resolutely 
across, while the scared girl clung to his arm. 

She released her hold as they reached the other side of 
the bridge, and he drove on in thoughtful silence for some 
distance. At length he cleared his throat. 

" Julia, you spoke just now of clinging to me, no matter 
what happened. I wonder if you would cling to me all 
my life ? " This was a great deal of sentiment and imagery 
for a man with eight generations of New England ancestry 
behind him. 

Her answer was favorable, but, being astute young 



64 LIFE OF GRANT 

Americans, they agreed to say nothing to Mr. and Mrs. 
Dent till his return from the South, at least. He was 
quite sure Colonel Dent would not favor his suit. A poor 
plain young second lieutenant (by courtesy), a man 
whisked about at the command of the War Department, 
was a very bad match for Miss Julia Dent. 

Lieutenant Grant left immediately to join his regiment 
near Natchitoches, in Louisiana, and Miss Dent went back 
to White Haven to wait, which is the lot of women. She 
found her greatest pleasure, during the years of separation 
which followed, in his letters. He had always been a 
good letter- writer, but under the stimulus of love and a 
life of action in strange scenes he surpassed himself. He 
delineated the landscape, the camp life, and the campaigns, 
and through all his letters ran the expression of a pure 
and loyal love. 

His first camp was near the town of Natchitoches, in 
Louisiana. It is an old French town situated on the Red 
River. At that time the Sabine formed the United States 
frontier to the Southwest. The nearest post was called 
Fort Jessup, but the camp, which was on a pine ridge, 
was called " Camp Salubrity " by the soldiers. The State 
of Texas was not yet annexed, though annexation was 
pending in Congress. 

In a letter to a friend he describes his journey to Camp 
Salubrity, and says : " My trip was marked with no in- 
cident, save one, worth relating, and that one is latighable, 
curious, important, surprising, etc. ; but I can't tell it now; 
it is for the present a secret." This was his reference to 
his proposal and acceptance. 

He describes his mode of living : " I have a small tent 
that the rain runs through as it would through a sieve. 
For a bedstead I have four short pine sticks set upright, 
and planks running from the two at one end to the others ; 
for chairs I use my trunk and bed ; and as to a floor, we 
have no such luxury yet. Our meats are cooked in the 
woods by servants who know as little of culinary matters 
as I do myself." 

The regiment remained in camp at Salubrity for a year, 
waiting for further orders. During this time the officers 



CALL TO WAR 65 

whiled away the days by visiting Fort Jessup, Natchitoches, 
Grand Grove, and other places of interest. Lieutenant 
Grant learned to play " brag," and on rainy days, with 
Longstreet and other young officers, used to play all day 
at penny stakes. This was wildly exciting at times, but 
not calamitous to any player ; sometimes they lost seventy- 
five cents! 

Ostensibly the Third and Fourth regiments were sta- 
tioned at that point " to prevent filibustering into Texas," 
but really as a menace to Mexico in case she appeared to 
contemplate war. Generally the officers of the army were 
indifferent whether the annexation should be consum- 
mated or not ; but Grant was bitterly opposed to the 
measure. He saw in it aggression and the selfish plans of 
politicians, and he began also to comprehend something 
of the far-reaching policy of the slave interest, which had 
no hope of new territory in the Northwest, and therefore 
must seek it in the Southwest. 

There is something inexorable in the manner in which 
the South won this fight for new territory, and something 
mystical in the process by which a sectional victory came 
at the last to be a national glory. Looking at the map of 
1844 makes it hard to believe that the United States could 
have maintained such a line of frontier. New Mexico, 
also a sparsely settled Mexican province, extended into 
the north to the latitude of the southern line of Kansas. 
This jagged, vague, and wandering line was too long to 
be held. It needed to be reduced to simple terms. 

All this year of camp life the discussion raged in Con- 
gress and in the North. The abolitionists were raising 
their banner with a ferocity of fanaticism which made war 
a certainty and a necessity. This was the second advan- 
cing wave of discussion. War was prophesied in the in- 
tensity of this discussion. Slavery won ; the State was 
annexed. In March, 1845, President Tyler signed the 
bill for annexation, and Texas became a part of the 
United States, and the "army of observation" was or- 
dered to occupy " the disputed territory," that is to say, 
the tract lying between the Nueces and Colorado rivers. 

The abolitionists and Free-soilers of the North received 



66 LIFE OF GRANT 

the news with bitter sorrow. It meant at least two more 
slave States, and seemed to put just that much further 
off the abolition of human slavery in the nation. The 
pro-slavery element was correspondingly elated, and set 
about making the most of their victory. No time was 
allowed for a settlement with regard to this territory ; but 
General Taylor, the famous Indian-fighter, who was then 
in command of the Southwest district, was ordered to 
cross the Nueces and enter upon the territory in dispute. 
" If they offer to fight, we will whip them," was the feeling 
of a very large body of people in the North as well as in 
the South. 

Early in May, Lieutenant Grant, believing he was about 
to go into war, with remote chance of being killed, asked 
for a leave of absence, and hastened to St. Louis to see 
his bride elect, and to get the consent of Colonel Dent to 
his union with his daughter Julia. This was given grudg- 
ingly and with reservations and provisos, and Lieutenant 
Grant returned to his regiment. 

Up to this time he had not given up his plan to become 
an instructor in mathematics at West Point. He still 
allowed himself to dream of a quiet life in a cottage on 
the Hudson — a very modest home, with his young wife 
therein, and his life going peacefully and unbrokenly for- 
ward. He had less military zeal, probably, than any 
officer of the American army. 

Nevertheless he was a soldier, and entered upon his 
duties with outward readiness. Early in July the regi- 
ment was ordered to New Orleans, where it went into 
barracks and waited for the politicians to decide upon the 
next order. This took them to Corpus Christi, which was 
a small village at the mouth of the Nueces River and on 
the edge of the territory in dispute. Here Lieutenant 
Grant came under general command for the first time. 
There were about three thousand men under the imme- 
diate leadership of General Zachary Taylor. Grant was 
profoundly impressed with this bold, ready, and uncon- 
ventional soldier, whose services against the Indians had 
already raised him to prominence second only to that of 
General Scott, commander-in-chief of the army. 




Lieutenant U. S. Crant and Lieutenant Alexander Hays in 1845, wiien tliey were 

startine for the Mexican War. 



ormly, u as taken at Camp Salubrity, Louisiana, 
lis racing pony Dandy, and beside Lieutenant 



The original picture, owned by Mrs. Agnes i\L Hays ( 

in 1845. Beside (Irant (the figure in the background) is ...., ,„^...^ t—-/ — j' . 

Hays is his pony Sunshine. Tlie two men had been fellow-cadets at West Point, and served in the same 
regiment in the Mexican War. Afterward Hays, like tirant, retired from the army, to reenter it at the 
breaking out of the Civil War as a colonel of volunteers. He became a brigadier-general, and was killed in 
the battle of the Wilderness. Grant, on learning of his death, said: "1 am not surprised that he met his 
death at the head of his troops; it was just like him. He was a man who would never follow, but would 
always lead, in battle." 



CALL TO WAR ^^ 

Texas at that time was very sparsely settled. San 
Antonio was but a village and fort, and Corpus Christi 
was a cross between a frontier ranch and a smugglers' 
camp. Being at the mouth of the Nueces River, it was 
the objective landing-place for an "army of occupation." 
The town, when the army landed there, consisted of 
twenty adobe houses. In a few weeks it was a town of 
a thousand inhabitants, not counting the soldiers. Camp- 
followers, traders, as well as citizens, attracted by the 
presence of the soldiers, made up this miscellaneous and 
not over-refined village. 

There was hunting on the plain back of the town, but 
that interested Lieutenant Grant very little ; he was no 
gunner. He was far more interested in the wild horses 
which moved in myriads over the Texas levels. 

Life at Corpus Christi during the early autumn was not 
pleasant. The heat was excessive and the air filled with 
moisture. People live there, it is true, and apparently 
enjoy life ; but the mortality among those not acclimated 
is very great in the heated season of the year. The 
Northern army suffered ; there were many sick, though 
Grant remained well and active. 

He made his first attempt as an actor at this time. 
" The officers, eager for diversion, had built a theater, 
and were depending upon their own efforts for reimburse- 
ment. The dramatic company was necessarily organized 
among the younger officers, who took both male and 
female parts. In farce and comedy they did well enough, 
and soon collected funds enough to pay for the building 
and incidental expenses. At length, finding themselves 
sufficiently in funds to send over to New Orleans for cos- 
tumes, they concluded to try tragedy. The choosing of 
players became more difficult when it came to a question 
of the ' Moor of Venice.' Lieutenant Theodoric Porter 
was selected to be the Moor; and Lieutenant Grant, be- 
cause of his small stature, handsome face, and soft voice, 
was chosen to play the daughter of Brabantio. He looked 
very well indeed dressed up, but Porter insisted that there 
was hardly sentiment enough in having a man play the 
part ; so the managers sent over to New Orleans for Mrs. 



68 LIFE OF GRANT 

Hart, who was very popular with the garrisons of Florida. 
She came, and all went well." Grant played in several 
farces, notably in "The Irish Lion." Longstreet was in 
the cast also, and furnishes an account of it. 

Lieutenant Grant welcomed any relief from the weari- 
some Hfe there on the hot sand, and when the opportunity 
offered he joined the paymaster's outfit on its regular trip 
to San Antonio and Austin. He saw the prairie, in all 
its majesty, on that trip. Deer, antelope, and turkeys 
abounded. It was a lonely land, with no settlement in 
all the long way between Corpus Christi and San Antonio, 
which was already famous for its tragic Alamo and its 
capture by Santa Aiia some years before. Grant met 
with no hairbreadth adventures during his outing, yet it 
was decidedly a memorable thing to ride by day over this 
mighty primeval spread of sod, sighting the unhaltered 
herds of cattle, and sleeping at night in the grass, with 
not so much as a tent-cloth between him and the stars. 

" One evening, while they were camped in the wilder- 
ness, there rose a multitudinous howling and yelping of 
wolves. Grant, not used to the ways of these animals, 
was seriously alarmed. His companion smiled, and said : 
' How many do you think there are ? ' 

" ' Oh, about a dozen,' he replied. 

" ' Let 's go and see,' suggested the other. 

"They charged upon the fearsome pack, and lo! one 
wolf had made all the noise!" 

Grant laid this by in his mind, and when some enemy 
made loud clamor he thought of the solitary wolf's mani- 
fold V'^lping. 



/ 



CHAPTER XI 
grant's first battle 

MEANWHILE President Polk was in a quandary. 
He wished the army to advance in hostile guise, 
but he did not like to take the responsibility of command. 
He sent broad hints to General Taylor that it was de- 
sirable to provoke an engagement ; but Taylor refused to 
move without official orders. He was too shrewd not 
to understand the Executive's predicament. He insisted 
on having definite and unequivocal instructions, through 
proper military channels. 

At length Polk ordered the army to proceed to the 
Rio Grande. 

The story of the campaign which followed was well set 
forth by Lieutenant Grant in a letter written at Mata- 
moros on June 26, 1846. Barring some comically mis- 
spelled words, it is a clear and well-ordered account of 
the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. 

I have just received your letter of the 6th of June, the first I 
have had from you since my Regt took the field in anticipation 
of the Anne.xation of Texas. Since that time the 4th Infantry 
has experienced nut little of that ease and luxury of which the 
Hon. Mr Black speaks so much. Besides hard marching a great 
part of the time we have not even been blessed with a good tent 
as a protection against wind and weather. 

At Corpus Christs our troops were much exposed last winter 
which the citizens say was the severest season they have had for 
many years. From Corpus Christi to this place (a distance of 
about 180 miles) they had to march through a long 'sandy desert 
covered with salt ponds and in one or two instances ponds of 

69 



70 LIFE OF GRANT 

drinkable water were separated by a whole days March, The 
troops suffered much but stood it Uke men who were able to 
fight many such battles as those of the 8th & 9th of May, that is 
without a murmur. 

On our arrival at Rio Grande we found Matamoras occupied 
by a force superior to ours (in numbers) who might have made 
our March very uncomfortable if they had have had the spirit 
and courage to attempt it. But they confined their hostilities 
(except their paper ones) to small detached parties and single 
individuals as in the cases yuu menlioii ;n your letter, until they 
had their force augmented to thrible or quadruple ours and then 
they made the bold efforts of which the papers are full. About 
the last of April we got word of the enemy crossing the river no 
doubt with the intention of cutting us off from our supplies at 
Point Isabel. On the ist of April at three o'clock General 
Taylor started with about 2000 men to go after and escort the 
waggon train from Point Isabel, and with the determination to 
cut his way, no matter how superior their numbers. 

Our March on this occation was as severe as could be made. 
Until three o'clock at night we scarsely halted, then we laid 
down in the grass and took a little sleep and marched the bal- 
lance of the way the next morning. Our March was mostly 
through grass up to the waist with a wet and uneven bottom 
yet we made 30 miles in much less than a day. I consider my 
March on that occation equal to a walk of sixty miles in one 
day on good roads and unencumbered with troops. The next 
morning after our arrival at Point Isabel we heard the enemies 
Artillery playing upon the little Field work which we had left 
Garrisoned by the 7th Infy and two Companies of Artillery. 
This bombardment was kept up for seven days with a loss of 
but two killed and four or five wounded on our side. The loss 
of the enemy was much greater though not serious. 

On the 7th of May General Taylor started from P. I. with his 
little force encombered with a train of about 250 waggons loaded 
with proviosions and ammunition. Although we knew the enemy 
was between us and Matamoras and in large numbers too, yet I 
did not believe I was not able to appreciate the possibiHty of an 
attack from them. We had heard so much bombast and so 
many threats from the Mexicans that I began to believe that 
they were good for paper wars alone, but they stood up to their 
work manfully. 

On the 8th when within about 14 miles of Matamoras we 
found the enemy drawn up in line of battle on the edge of the 
Priarie next a piece of woods called Palo Alto (which is the 



grant's first battle yt 

Spanish for tall Trees) Even then I did not believe they were 
going to give battle. Our troops were halted out of range of 
Artillery and the waggons parked and the men allowed to iiU 
their canteens with water. All preparations being made we 
marched forward in line of battle until we received a few shots 
rrnm the enemy and then we halted and then our Artillery com- 
menced. 

The first shot was fired about three o'clock p, m. and was 
Kept up pretty equally on both sides until sun down or after ; we 
tnen encamped on our own ground and the enemy on theirs. 

We supposed that the loss of the enemy had not been much 
greater than our own and expected of course that the fight 
would be renewed in the morning. During that night I believe 
all slept as soundly on the ground at Palo Alto as if they had 
been in a palace. For my part I dont think I even dreamed of 
battles. 

During the days fight I scarsely thought of the probability or 
possibility of being touched myself (although 9 lb. shots were 
whistling all round) until near the close of the evening a shot 
struck the ranks a little ways in front of me and nocked one 
man's head oflf, nocked the under jaw of Capt. Page entirely 
away and brought several others to the ground. Although 
Capt. Page received so terrible a wound he is recovering from 
it. The under jaw is gone to the wind pipe and the tongue 
hangs down upon the throat. He will never be able to speak or 
to eat. 

The next morning we found to our surprise that the last rear 
guard of the enemy was just leaving their ground, the main body 
having left during the night. From Palo Alto to Matamoras 
there is for a great part of the way a dense forest of under 
growth, here called Chapparel. The Mexicans after having 
marched a few miles through tins were reenforced by a con- 
ciderable body of troops. They chose a place on the opposite 
side from us of a long but narrow pond (called Resaca de la 
Palma) which gave them greatly the advantage of position. 
Here they made a stand. The fight was a pel Mel affair evry 
body for himself. The Capparel is so dense that you may be 
within five feet of a person and not know it. Our troops rushed 
forward with shouts of victory and would kill and drive away 
the Mexicans from evry piece of Artillery they could get their 
eyes upon. The Mexicans stood this hot work for over two 
hours but with a great loss. When they did retreat there was 
such a panic among them that they only thought of safty in 
flight. They made the best of their way for the river and where 



72 LIFE OF GRANT 

ever they struck it they would rush in. Many of them no doubt 
were drowned. 

Our loss in the two days were 182 killed & wounded. What 
the loss of the enemy was cannot be certainly ascertained but I 
know acres of ground was strewed with the bodies of the dead 
and wounded. I think it would not be an over estimate to say 
that their loss from killed, wounded, take prisoners and missing 
was over 2000 and of the remainder nothing now scarsely re- 
mains. So precipitate was their flight when they found that we 
were going to cross the river and take the town, that sickness 
broke out among them and as we have understood, they have 
but little effective force left. News has been received that 
Parades is about taking the field with a very large force. Daily, 
volunteers are arriving to reenforce us and soon we will be able 
to meet them in what ever force they choose to come. What 
will be our course has not been announced in orders, but no 
doubt we will carry the war into the interior. 

Monteray, distance about 300 miles from here, will no doubt 
be the first place where difi5culties with an enemy await us. You 
want to know what my feelings were on the field of battle ! I 
do not know that I felt any peculiar sensation. War seems 
much less terrible to persons engaged in it than to those who 
read of the battles. 

I forgot to tell you in the proper place the amount of property 
taken. We took on the gth eight piece of Artillery with all their 
ammunition something like 2000 stand of Arms, Muskets, pistols, 
Swords, Sabres, Lances &c., 500 mules with their packs, Camp 
equipage & provisions and in fact evry thing they had. When 
we got into the Camp of the enemy evrything showed the great 
confidence they had of success. They were actually cooking 
their meal during the fight, and as we have since learned, the 
women of Matamoras were making prepartions for a great festi- 
val upon the return of their victorious Army. — The people of 
Mexico are a very different race of people from ours. 

The better class are very proud and tirinize over the lower 
and much more numerous class as much as hard master does 
over his negroes and they submit to it quite as humbly. The 
great majority inhabitants are either pure or more than half 
blooded Indians, and show but little more signs of neatness or 
comfort in their miserable dwellings than the uncivilized Indian: 
— Matamoras contains probably about 7000 inhabitants, a great 
majority of the lower order. It is not a place of as much busi- 
ness importance as our little towns of 1000. But no doubt I 
will have an opportunity of knowing more of Mexico and the 



grant's first battle 73 

Mexicans before I leave the country and I will take another 
occation of telling you more of them. 

So far our troops have had their health remarkably well. 

In these battles Taylor's men were armed with fiint- 
lock muskets, and his artillery was drawn by oxen! The 
enemy considerately looked on while he gee-hawed his 
iron cannon into decent array, and filled them up with 
powder and such shells as the time aflforded. The whole 
action had a touch of the comic in the midst of its tragedy. 

The poor Mexicans had even worse muskets; bell- 
mouthed Spanish blunderbusses and spears made up their 
most dangerous infantry weapons. They had in addition, 
however, a few brass cannon, throwing feebly and hesitat- 
ingly some solid shot, which the Americans mainly were 
able to dodge. There were some casualties in these skir- 
mishes, but, on the whole, the two armies managed it 
very well. It was the first encounter of the American 
arms with a civilized enemy for thirty years, and seemed 
a most momentous battle. This day was made the more 
memorable to Lieutenant Grant because he took his first 
command in the field. The captain of his company being 
selected for special duty. Lieutenant Grant was left in com- 
mand of the company — " an honor and responsibility I 
thought very great." 

The battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma were 
hardly more than skirmishes in the light of the more 
important operations soon begun against Monterey. 
Matamoros was a town of quite unimportant size, while 
Monterey was a city of great renown, the most important 
of all northern Mexico at that time. Toward this for- 
midable outpost General Taylor row set face. 



CHAPTER XII 
quartermaster's duties fall to grant 

IN August the army began to move up to the Rio 
Grande, which runs for hundreds of miles through a semi- 
arid land of mesquit and cactus, and is only navigable (in 
any sense of the word) to Camargo. At this latitude and 
altitude February is warm as May, and the heat of mid- 
summer is terrific ; therefore the forces were compelled to 
march at night. The cavalry and artillery took their way 
up the south side of the river, — that is to say, on Mexican 
soil, — while the rest of the command went by means of 
small steamers. These steamers were of the kind Lincoln 
described : when they moved they could n't whistle, and 
when they whistled they could n't move. As only part 
of the command could ride, the officers played cards to 
decide who should walk. 

At Camargo, Grant, now full second lieutenant, was 
made regimental quartermaster, which is a position re- 
quiring activity, resource, and regularity of habit. It is 
an important position, and one which cannot be well filled 
by sleepy or dull-witted men. An army must be fed; its 
supplies must not go astray nor fall behind ; its ammuni- 
tion must be ready and its ambulances on hand. And to 
always have these necessaries of an army in readiness is 
no small duty ; it means early rising, methodical habits, 
and careful scrutiny of details. 

This appointment seems to show the approval of his 
superiors at this time. A picture taken on this campaign 
shows him to have been a slight, boyish figure, with rather 
long, square-cut hair depending from a gig-top cap. In 

74 



i 



QUARTERMASTER'S DUTIES FALL TO GRANT 75 

spite of his youth, he must have been considered a trusty, 
energetic man of good administrative ability. His duties 
he himself has outlined: "Each day, after the troops had 
started, the tents and cooking-utensils had to be made 
into packages, so that they could be lashed to the backs 
of the mules. Sheet-iron kettles and mess-chests were 
inconvenient articles to transport in that way. It took 
several hours to get ready to start each morning, and by 
the time we were ready some of the mules first loaded 
would be tired of standing so long with their loads on 
their backs. Sometimes one would start to run, bowing 
his back and kicking up until he scattered his load; others 
would lie down and try to disarrange their loads by rolling 
on them. ... I am not aware of ever having used a 
profane expletive in my life, but I would have the charity 
to excuse those who may have done so, if they were in 
charge of a train of Mexican pack-mules of the time." 

Nothing shows Grant's equable temper, his command 
over himself, like serving as quartermaster in this land of 
burning sun and scant grass. 

He could tug and sweat and wrestle with a camp outfit 
each day, and not lose his temper. His men found him 
kind and patient ; his commanders found him always resource- 
ful and prompt. He was learning many lessons of practical 
warfare during these laborious marches. 

The ground from Camargo rises by broad slopes covered 
with mesquit and other low-growing trees ; but grass is 
scanty and water precious, especially in September. It 
was so hot that many of the men marched in their under- 
clothes. Each day the columns began to move before 
three o'clock, and the entire march for the day was made 
without pause. However, as they rose the heat lessened 
somewhat, and as they neared the mountains the water 
and forage grew more abundant. In spite of heat, drought, 
and scant forage. Grant brought his command through in 
good order. 

Monterey was the principal town in northern Mexico 
at that time. In 1846 it possessed fifteen or twenty thou- 
sand people; it has possibly sixty thousand to-day. In 
that day it could not be called a city in the usual sense 



16 LIFE OF GRANT 

of the word. It was, in fact, a fortified town of Mexican 
Indians, governed by a few Mexican-Spanish priests and 
soldiers. It had not four houses which were two stories 
high, except the church and the "bishop's palace." Its 
plaza was merely an open, unpaved square, surrounded 
by low adobe or soft stone buildings, with a church on 
the southern side, and a small fountain in the center. It 
was built of a soft rock which abounds in the hills near 
by, a deposit but little harder than clay, which the 
builders cut out in huge blocks and laid in thick, low 
walls. 

The people were a mixture of several tribes of Indians 
with Spanish pioneers, and were a small, dark, and peace- 
able people, not given to war with men, brave to war 
against the elements. They wore heavy conical hats of 
fur or palm, and carried with singular charm and grace 
their gay scrapes. The men were small, round-limbed, 
and unimposing, but capable of great endurance. The 
women were short and stout, and those of the peon class 
resembled the Comanche women. They were devoted to 
the Catholic faith as they understood it, and had in this 
religion their strongest emotion. Patriotism was not yet 
possible to them. 

They had founded their town many years before, there 
in the valley of the San Juan de Monterey. It is a mag- 
nificent spot, a wide, flat valley, with noble mountains 
from three to seven thousand feet in altitude walling it in. 
To the west is the main range, a sierra-edged, spectacular 
wall, which rises, sharp-cut as cardboard, seven thousand 
feet into the sky. To the southeast a fine peak called La 
Silla ("the saddle") rises five thousand feet in height. 
On every side of Monterey, dark, arid, inaccessible moun- 
tains stand, except on the northeast. Taylor approached 
from the east, and camped about three miles from the 
city at a fine group of springs, shaded by noble pecan- 
and walnut-trees. 

The plain before the city was quite level, and covered 
with mesquit and other forms of chaparral. Apparently 
nothing hindered marching directly upon the town. Tay- 
lor soon, discovered, however, that the citizens had made 



QUARTERMASTER'S DUTIES FALL TO GRANT TJ 

careful preparations for receiving him. Directly to the 
north ot the city a most formidable fortress, built of a 
dark stone, — not adobe, — was planted. It had been in- 
tended for a church, but was finally made a fortress of 
great strength, with massive walls, circled by a ditch. It 
was heavily manned, and to attack it meant loss of life. 

To the west, and guarding the Saltillo road, which is 
the main highway of northern Mexico and connects the 
city of Monterey with Saltillo and San Luis Potosi, stood 
an imposing structure called the bishop's palace. This 
building, begun many years before in times of danger, 
had heavy walls and a secret underground channel of 
escape. Behind it, and commanding both the Saltillo 
road and the town, were planted nearly a score of cannon. 

Across the highway, on a hill of lesser height, was 
another battery to defend a branch of the Saltillo road, 
while to the south and east were other cannon. General 
Ampudia, with ten or eleven thousand men, was in com- 
mand. To judge from his picture, he was a fine, soldierly 
figure, and a man of high intelligence. The defenses as 
planned were admirable, and the American army seemed 
little enough for such a siege in an enemy's country, en- 
tirely cut off from aid. The whole campaign would have 
been criminal in its audacity had not the Texas troops 
convinced General Taylor of the unmilitary character of 
the people. 

Quartermaster Grant now waited to see what General 
Taylor, who had already become his hero, would do. 
Here was a town with complete defenses. It had no 
weak spot, apparently. How would Taylor attack? 

He resorted to the familiar and primitive method: he 
prepared to flank the enemy. He sent his engineers to 
the west to see if there were not a way to dislodge the 
enemy at the bishop's palace. They reported that the 
hill upon which the palace stood was detached, and that 
it could be stormed from the southwest. To carry the 
bishop's palace meant complete command of the main 
artery of the republic, through which the supplies of the 
city had mainly to come. Also, the guns of the fort 
could be turned upon other forts, and upon the town itself. 



78 LIFE OF GRANT 

On the morning of the 20th Generai Taylor said to 
General Worth : " General, take your division and make 
the attempt to dislodge the enemy to the north and east 
I shall consider your attack the main movement." 

Lieutenant Grant remained with the eastern division 
of the army, and all day he watched with eager eyes to 
see the inexorable advance of the Northern army. Guns 
were run forward to a ravine before the " Black Fort," 
and planted where they could shell the enemy, while 
reconnoitering parties were out to the east. This was 
indeed war, grand and terrible, to the boy. Taylor 
seemed possessed of some supernatural power as he 
coolly gave orders to shell the town, and sent men to the 
right and left, and pushed his columns closer and closer 
to the town's walls. 

As regimental quartermaster Lieutenant Grant had no 
business to leave camp ; but the excitement grew too 
great for his young blood,* and when the cannonading 
thickened, he mounted a horse and rode to the front. 
He reached the line just in time to hear the order, 
" Charge! " which meant death to many brave fellows. 
The men pushed forward, and came under fire of the 
town. As they drew nearer the musketry from the house- 
tops joined the din. 

The little quartermaster was with the charge, and was 
the only man mounted, and therefore a special target for 
bullets; but he escaped unhurt. Colonel Garland, leading 
the charge on the Black Fort, exceeded his general's 
intentions, and the Americans suffered great loss. At 
length Colonel Garland, seeing the folly of a direct charge, 
" retreated sidewise " to the east, and joined the division 
under Taylor's immediate command, which was vigorously 
assaulting the lower end of the city. 

Partly encircling the town on the west and east there 
is a deep ravine, with a small stream flowing during cer- 
tain seasons of the year. Over this stream there were 

* In a letter to his folks he said : " I do not mean that you shall ever hear 
of my shirking my duty in battle. My new post of quartermaster is con- 
sidered to afford an officer an opportunity to be relieved from fighting, but I 
do not and cannot see it in that light. You have always taught me that the 
post of danger is the post of duty." 



quartermaster's duties fall to grant 79 

built several low bridges. A few houses stood outside 
these bridges, and two fortifications. The people natu- 
rally retreated across the stream, but their soldiers made 
a stern stand there. On one of the bridges stood a statue 
of the Virgin, and there the Mexicans fought with true 
battle frenzy. 

An Irish captain rushed up to General Taylor. 

" General, we '11 never clear that bridge while the saint 
stands there. They are fighting for the saint. Shall I 
smash her down, general?" 

" If you think best," Taylor replied. 

The captain, who well knew the power of the saint, 
battered down the pedestal, and tumbled the gilded figure 
into the water below. When the Mexicans saw their 
saint fall, they raised a hoarse cry of rage, and made one 
last desperate rush, fighting with clubs, spears, and 
stones ; then retired in despair, leaving the bridge in the 
hands of the Northern army. Grant was in the thick of 
the charge, still on his horse. The city was not yet won, 
however. 

Every housetop was manned by gunners lying behind 
low parapets of sand-bags or blocks of adobe ; and the 
Northern men paused, after crossing the bridge, and 
scattered out into the side streets. Every street leading 
west was swept by guns on the plaza, or by the muskets 
of the citizens on the housetops. Nevertheless, ten com- 
panies, under command of Colonel Garland, forced their 
way by successive rushes from street to street up to the 
very last barricade of the plaza. Quartermaster Grant 
was there on his horse, in the thick of the punishment; 
but his head was clear, his faculties at their best. 

The command could neither go forward nor back, and 
the battle hung poised till Colonel Garland at last dis- 
covered his ammunition to be running low. It then 
became necessary to get word to General Twiggs, his 
division commander, calling for ammunition or reinforce- 
ments. The colonel called for volunteers. 

" Men, I 've got to send some one back to General 
Twiggs. It 's a dangerous job, and I don't like to order 
any man to do it. Who '11 volunteer?" 



8o LIFE OF GRANT 

" I will," said Quartermaster Grant, promptly. " I. 've 
got a horse." 

" You 're just the man to do it. Keep on the side 
streets, and ride hard." 

Grant needed no direction, for he was among the best 
horsemen in the entire command, and had been instructed 
by the Comanches. He swung himself over his saddle, 
and, with one heel behind the cantle, and one hand 
wound in his horse's mane, dashed at full gallop down a 
side street leading to the north, a street which looked 
like a dry canal. At every crossing he was exposed to 
view, and the enemy, getting his range, sent a slash of 
bullets after him as he flashed past. Hanging thus, he 
forced his horse to leap a four-foot wall. He rode to the 
north till safely out of fire; then, regaining his seat, he 
turned to the east, and in a few moments' time drew rein 
before General Twiggs, and breathlessly uttered his 
message. 

Twiggs gave the order to collect the ammunition, but 
before it could be done the troops came pouring back. 

That night ended the fighting ; for while the " demon- 
strations " at the east ended thus unsuccessfully. General 
Worth, with his Texas troops, was making way inexorably 
toward the plaza from the west. 

The houses of Monterey are all built on the street, 
with the yards behind, and these yards are separated 
from each other by walls of adobe. Worth's men, accus- 
tomed to these Mexican towns, battered down the doors, 
and with picks and axes cut through these soft walls, and, 
thus under cover, advanced steadily from house to house. 
The army ate its way, like some huge worm, rod by rod, 
until General Ampudia felt the prolongation of the strug- 
gle to be useless, and on the morning of September 24, 
1846, the garrison surrendered. 

The people of Monterey loved their city, and fought 
for it well, even desperately ; but they had no adequate 
armament. Many were armed with slings and spears. 
Their guns were nearly as destructive to the friend be- 
hind as to the enemy in front. And yet they held at bay 
one of the most daring bands of fighters evqr called 



quartermaster's duties fall to grant 8i 

together. The honors were not all on the side of the 
invading army. Grant was deeply moved at the sight 
of the Mexican garrison marching out of town. It took 
away the last vestige of joy over the victory. 

During the day of rest which followed he ran across 
several old West Point classmates, and two old George- 
town schoolmates, Carr B. White and Chilton A. White, 
who had volunteered a few months before, and who were 
very glad to meet him. He had Httle time to talk, for 
he was very busy witn his quartermaster duties. He 
was up bright and early, and almost always on the go. 

His ride for ammunition was much talked of among 
the men, and everybody praised him. He was a young 
leilow oi good habits and good company. It was all 
wonderful business to the young men, and they thought 
it a very rare outing — now that the city was captured. 

"Though behaving with such gallantry," said his friend 
Longstreet, " Grant's name did not appear in the reports. 
In those days it was hard for a young officer to get men- 
tion unless he did something of very conspicuous bravery. 
After a man got to be captain or colonel a brevet was 
more easily obtained. They were sometimes obtained 
for merely looking at a battle." 



CHAPTER XIIi 

GRANT JOINS GENERAL SCOTT 

AFTER the taking of Monterey there was a pause ot 
J\ half a year in order that the Democratic adminis- 
tration might take thought concerning itself and the 
future. It was a sad dilemma for President Polk. He 
must go to war, and yet war advanced the fame of oppo- 
sition men. The added slave territory must be had, and 
yet the taking of it was likely to put a Whig in the Presi- 
dential chair. 

The victories of old " Rough and Ready " Taylor were 
already resounding through the North. The taking of 
" the city of Monterey," in popular conception, was a 
splendid achievement. In the imagination of the Ameri- 
cans at home, it was a city of castles, with turrets and 
carved battlements and shining domes, instead of an 
adobe Indian town with only three or four houses above 
ten feet in height. "The victor of Monterey and of 
Matamoros " was rapidly being advanced to the position 
of popular hero and Presidential candidate, and the 
administration determined to cripple him, if possible. It 
was decided at length to discredit his line of attack, and 
to put General Winfield Scott, the general-in-chief of the 
army, into the field in person. 

This also had its dangers ; for Scott, like all well-fur- 
nished Americans, believed himself capable of being 
President, and had a troublesome " knack of success " in 
a campaign. However, there was no help for it; there 
were no Democratic generals handy. In such way are 

82 



GRANT JOINS GENERAL SCOTT 83 

the affairs of a great nation run ; yet it ambles forward, 
awkward, undecided, irresistible. 

General Winfield Scott was an old man of huge physi- 
cal proportions and prodigious vanity, but a good soldier 
and a just man. He was called " Old Fuss and Feathers," 
and was very widely different in all ways from General 
Taylor, except in the soldierly quality ; both were ex- 
cellent commanders. 

To Lieutenant Grant General Scott was a very won- 
derful person, and occupied one of the most exalted posi- 
tions on earth, and might be forgiven for being conscious 
of his glory. Not only was he the chief commander of 
the army of the United States, but he was already a 
storied hero. He had led the army to victory at Chip- 
pewa and at Lundy's Lane in 1812. He was the author 
of " A System of General Military Regulations for the 
Army." He had been a great figure in the Black Hawk 
War, and the commander-in-chief in the Seminole War. 
He had been a personage present, at least in name, at 
every Fourth of July celebration in every Northern vil- 
lage, and he had been a resplendent figure at reviews at 
West Point. No wonder the boy lieutenant looked for- 
ward with keenest interest to the arrival of General Scott 
in Mexico. 

Scott's plan of campaign was necessarily at variance 
with Taylor's. He had all along insisted that Mexico 
City should be attacked directly from the East, with 
Vera Cruz as a landing-point ; and thitherward he promptly 
pushed his way, with reinforcements. He also called 
from General Taylor nearly all of his regular troops, 
leaving him only the volunteers, for which the old West- 
Pointer had a very carelessly concealed contempt. Lieu- 
tenant Grant was transferred, with his regiment, from 
General David Twiggs, under Taylor's command, to the 
division of General William Worth, under Scott. He 
therefore retraced the severe journey to Camargo and to 
Matamoros, thence by uncomfortable, much overloaded 
transports to Vera Cruz, where Scott was assembling his 
little army of invasion, like Cortez of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. 



84 LIFE OF GRANT 

The seaport of Vera Cruz, lying nearly due east of the 
city of Mexico, was an old town, built then, as now, of 
stone and adobe, in the one-storied, Spanish fashion, and, 
excepting its several superb churches, it was made up of 
flat-roofed, unimposing buildings. It is a place of tropical 
heat and of extreme humidity. Set as it is almost under 
the burning sun, on the shore of a tepid sea, with bad 
drainage and inefficient government, it is not a desirable 
place for a Northern man to land in during the month of 
May or June. The heat is like that of a steaming blanket. 
Night brings little relief. In the humid air everything 
ferments, rots, sends up poisonous gases, whereas in the 
dry climate of the interior refuse soon becomes dust, and 
is odorless. The very soil was full of germs of disease. 
Yet it was, and is, the main port of entry for Mexico 
City. 

Some three miles to the south of the city is a small, 
low-lying island called Sacrificios Island, because, so 
tradition runs, the people in olden times were annually 
accustomed thereon to sacrifice their young men and 
maidens to appease the gods. On this island Scott made 
landing in all military pomp, with bands playing " Yankee 
Doodle," and the French, Spanish, and English looking 
on from their vessels. The site of Vera Cruz is a sand 
beach, but back of it, in a half-circle, runs a series of low 
hills. On these hills Scott encamped and planted his 
siege-guns. Quartermaster Grant is said to have per- 
sonally supervised this siege, in pursuance of his pohcy 
to see all that went on. 

It was all a battle of cannons, and the infantry had 
little to do but swelter on the sand and fight flies and 
fleas. The city soon capitulated, and Scott, aware of the 
danger to his men of longer stay in this land of yellow 
fever, marched, in imposing review, in at the south gate 
and out at the north gate, and started for Jalapa, the next 
considerable town on the main highway to Mexico City. 

There was a certain sublimity of audacity in the un- 
hesitating march of that little army of ten thousand into 
an unknown country, against a nation of seven millions 
of people, and over gigantic mountain-ranges. Cortez 



GRANT JOINS GENERAL SCOTT 85 

marched, moved by dreams of gold, of splendor, of con- 
quest. Scott's army trudged mountainward, moved by a 
sort of national bravado, or, like Grant, because, being 
soldiers, their duty was to follow where their superiors 
led. In a letter to a friend Grant said : " I am heartily 
tired of the whole war." Its essential injustice oppressed 
him. 

For the first few days the heat was excessive ; the 
woods were full of poisonous plants and noxious insects; 
and Grant, again regimental quartermaster, had plenty to 
occupy himself with. He was a keen observer of all that 
went on. He had an eye to the beauty of the palms. 
He counted nearly two hundred kinds of birds. Several 
of his comrades speak of his habit of looking at things. 
His letters home are filled with details. 

The soil is at first covered with prickly-pear cactus and 
sparse grass. A little farther on the road enters low 
foot-hills covered with a wild tangle of strange plants and 
trees. Half-naked charcoal-burners and herders inhabit 
this level. A little higher are upland plains, with better 
grass — a land quite like the prairie of Texas. These in 
turn are left behind, and low hills appear. The vegetation 
thickens. Palms of various sorts rise against the sky like 
vast plumes. The people live in thatched huts, with walls 
of cane or stakes set close together. The trees are over- 
loaded with parasites, and all sorts of strange and beauti- 
ful flowers blaze like crimson and yellow stars in the deep 
green foliage. The giant mountains to the west are 
completely hidden by the forest of the foot-hills. 

Just on the edge of the first considerable heights the 
leading division encountered the enemy in force. Upon 
a sugar-loaf hill which rose beside the road Santa Ana 
had erected fortifications, and was present in person with 
about fifteen thousand men. The story of his march to 
Cerro Gordo is incredible. A courier some weeks before 
had fallen into the hands of the Mexicans, bearing upon 
his person the valuable information that Scott had weak- 
ened Taylor on the north to make an attack by way of 
Vera Cruz, and that Taylor had only a small force of 
volunteers. 



86 LIFE OF GRANT 

With this knowledge General Santa Ana conceived 
the tremendous plan of beating the two invading armies 
in detail. This involved a march of at least a thousand 
miles (four hundred and six leagues, the Mexicans say) 
in a land of ever-burning sunlight and scanty vegetation, 
and over almost waterless wastes. The line of march led 
from Mexico City to Saltillo over the inland plateau, which 
is like the plains of Arizona, thence back to Cerro Gordo. 
No American army could have made that journey in the 
same time. No one who has not passed over this burning 
waste, where the dust columns weirdly waltz, and the 
shadowless heavens blaze with heat, can realize it. To 
ride it on horseback is courageous ; to double-quick it as 
these poor peon soldiers did was heroic. Santa Aiia 
rode in a carriage, his officers on horses. The peons 
trotted, parched and burning by day, chilled to the heart 
at night, thirsty, hungry, and with bleeding feet. They 
met Taylor at Buena Vista on an open plain cut with 
arroyos, or deep ditch-like ravines, with high cactus-cov- 
ered hills on either hand. Santa Ana, with superb confi- 
dence, gave Taylor an hour in which to surrender. The 
stern old soldier replied, in effect, that all eternity was 
long enough for them to surrender in, and the fight 
began. The Mexicans were defeated crushingly. But 
Santa Ana turned and hastened south at such pace Taylor 
could not follow ; for these dark little men, with their 
limber, slender legs, are marvelous of foot ; they can trot 
all day in a sun whose heat would melt a Northern man's 
brains to jelly. 

As he went the desperate commander relentlessly im- 
pressed new troops, drilling them at night and before 
daybreak, and so arrived at Cerro Gordo with an army 
of fifteen thousand fairly well-disciplined men. It was a 
marvelous achievement, and let the whole honor be to 
the tireless little Mexicans, who knew not what they 
were fighting for, and had small stake even in victory. 

Santa Aiia, therefore, with batteries on either side of 
the road where it enters the foot-hills, was waiting for 
Scott. His troops were worn, ragged, dusty, but they 
were an army capable of fight. 



GRANT JOINS GENERAL SCOTT 87 

Scott, who had remained at Cerro Gordo to see the 
last arrangements made, hastened up, and with his engi- 
neering corps (which included George B. McCIellan and 
Robert E. Lee) began his reconnoitering. It did not 
take them long to arrange a flank movement. On the 
night of the 17th, through roads cut round the mountains, 
the men dragged howitzers by hand, hilariously as if on a 
froHc, but so silently that Santa Aiia's men slept undis- 
turbed. Santa Aiia afterward said he did n't think a 
goat could have approached from that quarter. The 
ground was rough, and in some places so steep the guns 
were hoisted by means of ropes ; but in early morning 
the invading army fell upon the Mexican reserve forces in 
the rear of the forts. 

In a letter dated " Tiping Ahualco, Mexico, May 3, 
1847," Lieutenant Grant graphically and clearly sets forth 
the battle. His spelling could not conceal the clearness of 
his story. 

On the night of the 15th Gen. Worth arrived at Plana del 
Rio three miles from the Battle ground. Gen. Twiggs with his 
IMvision had been there several days preparing for an attack. 
By the morning of the 1 7 th the way was completed to go around 
the Pass, Cierra Gorda, and make the attach in the rear as well 
as in the front. The difficulties to surmount made the under- 
taking almost equal to Bonaparte's Crossing the Alps. Cierra 
Gorda is a long Narrow Pass, the Mountains towering far above 
the road on either side. Some five of the peaks were fortified 
and armed with Artillery and Infantry. 

At the outlett of the Mountain Gorge a strong Breastwork 
was thrown up and 5 pieces placed in embrasure sweaping the 
road so that it would have been impossible for any force in the 
world to have advanced. Immediately behind this is a peak of 
the Mountains several hundred feet higher than any of the others 
and commanding them. It was on this hight that Gen. Twiggs 
made his attack. As soon as the Mexicans saw this hight taken 
they knew the day was up with them. Santa Anna Vamoused 
with a small part of his force leaving about 6000 to be taken 
prisoners with all their arms supplies &c. Santa Anna's loss 
could not have been less than 8000 killed, wounded, taken 
prisoners and misen. The pursuit was so close upon the retreat- 
ing few that Santa Anna's Carriage and Mules were taken and 



88 LIFE OF GRANT 

with them his Avooden leg and some 20 or 30 thousand dollars 
in money. 

Between the thrashing the Mexicans have got at Vuene Vista, 
Vera Cruz and Ceirra Gorda they are so completely broken up 
that if we only had transportation we could go to the City of 
Mexica and where ever else we liked without resistance. Gar- 
risons could be established in all the important towns and the 
Mexicans prevented from ever raising another Army. Santa 
Anna is said to be at Orazaba at the foot of a mountain always 
covered with snow and of the same name. He has but a small 
force. 

Orazaba looks from here as if you could almost throw a stone 
to it but it looked the same from lalapa some fifty miles back 
and was even visable from Vera Cruz. Since we left the Sea 
Coast the improvement in the appearance of the people and the 
stile of building has been very visable over anything I had seen 
in Mexico before. The road is one of the best in the world. 
The scenery is beautiful and a great deal of magnificent table 
land spreads out above you and below you. lalapa is the most 
beautiful place that I ever saw. It is about 4000 feet above Sea 
and being in the Torrid Zone, they have the everlasting Spring 
Fruit and vegitables the year around. I saw there a great many 
handsome ladies and more well dressed men than I had ever seen 
before in the Republic. From lalapa we marched to Perote and 
walked quietly into the Strong Castle that you no doubt have 
read about. It is a great work. One Brigade, the one I belong 
to is now 20 miles in advance of Perote. Soon no doubt we 
will advance upon Pueblo. 

Grant was instructed in other ways by the battle of 
'Cerro Gordo. The prisoners were paroled at once, and 
their arms thrown into piles and burned, a proceeding 
not lost on Quartermaster Grant. Santa Aiia escaped 
with about seven thousand men, and retreated rapidly to 
Mexico City, where he hastily prepared to make his last 
stand. The Northern army pushed directly toward the 
heart of the nation, halting next at Jalapa for rest and 
food. The battle of Cerro Gordo, like the battle of Bueno 
Vista on the north, opened the way to the capital. The 
army of victory moved on some twelve or fifteen miles to 
Jalapa, one of the most beautiful towns in all Mexico. 



GRANT JOINS GENERAL SCOTT 89 

Here the troops lay for some weeks, getting much 
needed rest and food. Jalapa is some forty-five hundred 
feet above the sea, and has abundant water, pure air, and 
an equable climate. The surroundings of hill and pasture 
and stone wall are curiously like the New England hill- 
country, with greater vegetation and higher mountains in 
vista. The people of Jalapa are red-brown of color, and 
a fine, well-formed race. They were decidedly friendly 
in a few days — as soon, in fact, as they perceived the 
good discipline of the army. 

General Scott carried wise government with him. He 
abolished the labor tax which was levied by the city of 
Jalapa on farmers bringing goods to sell in the streets, 
and in other matters ruled like a wise and humane man. 
His was a large and liberal mind, and while he loved to 
impress people with his importance and position, he was 
a dispassionate and just conqueror. He aimed to make 
the conquered people his friends; and unquestionably his 
good discipline and his wise regulations of traffic did 
much to keep down insurrection in the cities he was 
forced to garrison lightly and leave behind. The small 
lieutenant had his keen eyes open to all this also. The 
soldiers of the American army were not exactly Christian 
gentlemen, if the tales of their lust and greed which the 
natives of Mexico still tell are true. Taylor's volunteers 
were so notorious as outragers of women that Scott issued 
a special order to stop murder and rapine. 

While the army needed rest, it was also desirable to 
follow the retreating Mexican forces as soon as possible, 
to prevent reinforcements and fortifications on the great 
highway from Jalapa to the Central Valley. General 
Worth was sent forward to Perote, where a strong castle 
was said to be situated, with orders to siege and hold it 
till the main army came up. 

The road from Jalapa climbs, within a few miles, two 
thousand feet, and comes at last upon a high, wide valley 
plain, semi-arid, yet highly cultivated. Just at the point 
where the plateau ends and the descent to the " warm 
country" begins was a little flat, mud-walled town, with 



90 LIFE OF GRANT 

a low, Strong-walled, four-square building of stone stand- 
ing near, with watch-towers at the corners, and a building 
occupying the inclosed yard. This was El Castillo de 
Perote. It was capable of great resistance ; but the heart 
of battle was gone out of these naturally peaceful people, 
and they surrendered at once, leaving the road open to 
the city of Puebla. 



I 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE WONDERFUL INLAND MARCH 

ACROSS the level, dusty plain covered with hedges of 
IJL the pulque plant, and sown to grain and planted 
with sugar-cane, the army marched, with eyes on myste- 
rious mountains, and tongues tasting strange fruits and 
foods. It was a re-reading of the history of Cortez, to 
men like Grant. This land was old — old, almost, as 
Egypt. Its soil was mellow with a thousand plowings 
and soaked with a million suns. On every side the quick- 
moving small men and brown women, in cool garments, 
trod behind patient mules, or in files, carrying on their 
backs crates of fowls, bags of grain, or bottles of water. 
Grant saw it all — the birds, the cattle, the flowers. In a 
letter written to his parents in May he alludes to his 
duties and to his pleasures: 

My dear parents : We are progressing steadily toward the 
Mexican capital. Since I last wrote you my position has been 
rendered more responsible and laborious. . . . But I must not 
talk to you all the time about the War. I shall try to give you 
a few descriptions of what I see in this country. It has in it 
many wonderful things. ... It is very mountainous. Its 
hillsides are covered with tall palms whose waving leaves present 
a splendid appearance. They toss to and fro in the wind like 
plumes in a helmet, their deep green glistening in the sunshine or 
glittering in the moon beams in the most beautiful way. I have 
been much delighted with the Mexican birds. . . . Many have 
a plumage that is superlatively splendid but the display of their 
music does not equal that of their colors. . . . They beat ours 
in show but do not equal them in harmony. 

But I hear the " taps " as I write and must be on the move. 

91 



92 LIFE OF GRANT 

I have written this letter with my sword fastened on my side and 
my pistol within reach, not knowing but that the next moment I 
may be called into battle again. 

It was all unreal as a picture of Mesopotamia, What 
lay beyond ? This was but the portal of the storied nation ; 
the great and famous city of Mexico was still in the dis- 
tance. When they thought of what they had risked in 
venturing thus into a populous unknown land, the men of 
the small army wished themselves at home. 

The American general was apparently in desperate 
straits. The Whigs and Democrats were struggling to 
seize and hold all the advantages of the victories he had 
won. About four thousand of his men were nearing the 
end of their enlistment. In order to allow them to return 
through Vera Cruz before the worst of the season set in, 
Scott very generously discharged them at once and sent 
them home. This reduced his force in the field to about 
five thousand men. He was not only unable to maintain 
a suitable garrison, but unable to hold to his depot of sup- 
plies. Thus with five thousand men he cut loose from 
his base of munitions, and marched against a city of two 
hundred thousand inhabitants in a nation of several million 
people. Certainly this was bravery, if not foolhardiness. 
He felt, as did all his men, no doubt, the manifest destiny 
of the American States behind him. Certainly he knew 
that the President was his enemy. 

Nothing was lost upon the small lieutenant wrestling 
with the mules in the wagon-train. He understood 
Scott's bravery. He mused deeply upon this cutting 
loose from all supplies. He aided in living ofT the enemy, 
and he came to believe also in the manifest destiny of the 
American republic. A very inconsiderable but valuable 
man was this lieutenant busily bringing the wagon-train 
forward, and growing a red beard meanwhile to appear 
less youthful. He was also acquiring the use of whisky 
and tobacco. Elsevvise his habits were of the best, and 
his tongue was still unused to foul and profane words. 
He was being educated in the rough school of war, and 
educated in the way which is lasting and deep-laid. 



THE WONDERFUL INLAND MARCH 93 

Puebla fell into the invaders' hands without resistance. 
It was a fine city — the finest in the nation, excepting only 
the capital. It had superb cathedrals and convents with 
magnificent gardens. It had irrigating-ditches, and was 
surrounded by well-tilled fields of grain and maguey 
plants. In the really splendid plaza the invaders stacked 
arms, and looked about them with astonishment that such 
a city should so easily yield to assault. Directly before 
it, and separating it from the valley and city of Mexico, is 
the mightiest range of mountains on the American conti- 
nent. Popocatepetl is i 7,800 feet in height, and Iztacci- 
huatl, slightly lower, lifts a snowy turban into the sky a 
little farther to the north. These peaks are covered with 
perennial snow. Over this chain of mountains the direct 
road to Mexico ran, and thence Scott directed his engineers. 

At this point two most grateful events occurred : re- 
inforcements sent by a reluctant Congress came in (on 
the 1st of August), and the army was swelled to an 
attacking force of ten thousand men ; and, of almost 
equal importance, two men, long residents of the city of 
Mexico, came in and offered their services as guides. 
Their names were James Wright and Jonathan Fitzwaters. 
They had been hid away in the city, but as the American 
army approached they escaped and succeeded in reaching 
Puebla unhurt. 

An army without guides is like an animal without eyes. 
These men supplied the advancing columns with informa- 
tion of vital value. The plans of Santa Aria, his forts, his 
forces, were now known, and Scott and his engineers set 
to work upon the attack like men playing a game of chess. 

The Mexicans have a proverb, " Puebla is the first 
heaven, Mexico is the second." The city of Mexico lies in 
a wide, flat valley, at an altitude of seven thousand feet 
above the sea. It is semi-arid and semi-tropic in char- 
acter, with a rainy season which begins in July or August, 
and lasts for several weeks. During this time water is 
abundant, and the somber brown fields and hot slopes of 
withered grass awake to a vivid and gracious green. 
Vegetation of all kinds grows with magical swiftness. 
Water pours down from the mountains to the west, 



94 LIFE OF GRANT 

among whose tops the clouds gather and burst almost 
every midday. Every reservoir fills up, and the city is 
threatened with inundation. At such times the three 
lake-beds Tezcuco, Chalco, and Zochmilcho become shin- 
ing expanses in the vivid green of the valley floor. 

On the shores of these lakes, and set in the fields of 
maguey and wheat and cane, are small Indian villages of 
low adobe walls, each village having one beautiful struc- 
ture, its church, with chime of bells, tiled dome, and grace- 
ful tower. In the city of Mexico itself there are scores 
of noble churches. 

It was in August during the rainy season when Scott's 
army looked down upon the beautiful valley, with its 
lakes shining like pools of melted silver, and its green 
everywhere meshed with streams of mountain water. It 
was a beautiful sight, and the men raised a cheer as they 
topped the divide. It was all that imagination or poetry 
had pictured it, and some of the more thoughtful experi- 
enced a feeling of awe as they fell into line down that 
western slope to capture this great city of such age and 
power and wealth. 

On the shore of Lake Chalco, at a little Indian village 
called Ayotia, Scott collected his army, and began to 
reconnoiter. His guides explained to him that there were 
eight gates to the city. The city was surrounded by 
dikes and ditches to turn aside the mountain water during 
the rainy season. At certain points in these dikes were 
bridges and gates defended by fortifications. Directly in 
front was the ancient thoroughfare between Lake Chalco 
and Lake Zochmilcho. To the right was a road passing 
between Chalco and Tezcuco, defended by a high, abrupt 
mound called El Penon. The other gates were to the 
west and north, and Scott, after the report of his engi- 
neers and guides, decided to move round the lakes Chalco 
and Zochmilcho, and attack the city in the rear. A bad 
roadway circled the lake close to the mountains on the 
southeast, and along this causeway the army filed, and 
on the 1 8th of August entered Tlalpan, a little Indian 
town situated on the edge of the rising ground, about ten 
miles south of the city of Mexico. 



THE WONDERFUL INLAND MARCH 95 

To the west of Tlalpan lies a. vast overflow of lava 
called El Pedregale. It evidently came from a crater 
some miles southwest of Tlalpan, and ran in a prodigious 
slow stream to the north. As it cooled it cracked and 
broke into orderless and savage masses of sharp rock, 
black and porous. In this desolate mass, and adding to 
its ferocious appearance, cactus plants had fastened, in 
company with other gaunt, stunted forms of vegetation 
unfamiliar to a Northern man. It was popularly believed 
by the Mexicans to be impassable. 

This mass of rock, heaped and seamed and blasted, 
runs irregularly northward, separating the village of Con- 
treras from Tlalpan, and the haciendas (estates) called 
San Antonio and Coapa from San Angel and Tacubaya. 
A roadway skirts this rock from Tlalpan to Churubusco, 
and on this road, at San Antonio and Churubusco, were 
garrisons and cannon. 

Scott again determined to flank these positions. His 
engineers found a way, without great difficulty, across 
El Pedregale, and the Americans fell upon Contreras 
on the morning of the 20th of August. The assault 
made in the early light had all the appalling elements of 
a surprise in battle. It was a matter of not more than 
ten or fifteen minutes, but it took the fighting heart out 
of the Mexican army. 

Men and officers alike were amazed and terrified by 
the power and the ferocity of these Northern men. Va- 
lencia's army broke into flight, and streamed back into 
the city, bellowing as they ran : " Here come the Yan- 
kees! Here come the Yankees!" 

Lieutenant Grant was with Colonel Garland's division, 
which was meanwhile confronting the hacienda San 
Antonio; but when Contreras was taken, San Antonio 
was evacuated, and the two armies advanced on the two 
parallel roads which skirt El Pedregale and lead directly 
toward Mexico. The next stronghold which presented a 
most formidable point was the church and convent in the 
Httle village of Churubusco, which stands on the level 
plain surrounded by tilled fields marked out by ditches. 

In this land every cabin has the wall of a fortress, and 



96 LIFE OF GRANT 

every church is a castle. Churubusco was a low church 
with a noticeably high wall, having but two entrances, a 
side gate to the south, with the main entrance to the 
west. Before it all huts had been leveled and breast- 
works constructed at a few rods from the wall. It looked 
unassailable ; but at the word, the Northern soldiers 
started across the open field, impetuous, unwavering as so 
many bulldogs. They went over the earthworks, silenced 
the cannon, raised ladders against the wall, and in an 
incredibly short time sent the stars and stripes, like a 
crimson flower, soaring up the flagpole. So great was 
the demoralization in the ranks of the Mexicans, the troops 
could have entered the city upon the heels of the fugi- 
tives. Scott's motives were noble, and his aim was to 
prevent further bloodshed, but unquestionably he made a 
mistake at this point which prolonged the war. 

All the Mexicans expected his entry, as a batch of 
intercepted letters of the time show. The city was in 
terror. The streets were filled with Valencia's fleeing 
soldiers, and Santa Aiia's troops streamed about the city 
distractedly, worn, and covered with mud. The whole 
city shuddered as if menaced by flood or by fire, and in 
despair awaited Scott's invading hosts. 



CHAPTER XV 

GRANT AT MOLINO DEL REY 

WILD charges arose against Santa Ana and other 
officers. They were accused of letting jealousy 
of each other destroy their patriotism. Santa Ana was 
accused openly of having left Valencia to be swallowed 
up at Contreras. The commander of the cavalry was 
accused of cowardice, while Santa Ana himself was nearly 
crazed with chagrin ; for at Churubusco the editor of the 
" American Star " (a paper started a little later in Mexico 
City) found blowing about in the mud scores of copies of 
a grandiose address published by Santa Aiia among his 
troops. 

" I count and rely," he ended, " upon the courage of 
the brave men who have sworn to conquer or to perish 
with me. Shall ten or twelve thousand men, let loose 
among a population which detests them, have it in their 
power to make us cower? No; we will chastise them; 
and God, who protects the justice of nations, will visit 
them with condign punishment. Let our motto be, 
' Independence or death.' " 

This was the proper spirit, and there is no question but 
Santa Aiia meant it. Incompetency on the part of the 
officers does not alone explain their defeat. As a matter 
of fact, the trouble lay deeper than even the personnel of 
the army. The nation was organically weak. It was 
not ready for such a war. Its rulers were hopelessly 
divided. It was an Indian nation governed by Spaniards 
or Spanish descendants, and the army was largely com- 
posed of peons forcibly impressed into service, and there- 
fore the entire army lacked the patriotism which includes 

97 



98 LIFE OF GRANT 

both the past and the future. They would defend with 
frantic bravery their own city or province, but they could 
not fight for the whole nation, because they had not yet 
conceived an emotion so deep and broad. 

A man who has always toiled like an ox, carrying grain 
and dirt in baskets on his head, who has been driven into 
the army with his arms tied behind him, is not likely to 
stand erect in review, nor to fight heartily and with inteUi- 
gence when the charge comes. Not all the men were of 
this class, but many of them indisputably were. When 
the Americans, yelling Hke wild-cats, with their teeth 
clenched in jocular curses, leaped over their breastwork, 
the peon soldiers fled. They could not comprehend such 
intrepidity. 

Again, Scott's army moved as a unit. Every man 
knew that only victory could save him. He was in the 
enemy's, country. Each column had the unwavering 
directness of a cannon-ball. It moved like a battering- 
ram in a charge. It did not scatter, nor work blindly ; 
every blow reached the heart. Its column pierced the 
defenses of the Mexicans as the steel projectile of the 
rifled siege-gun enters a wall of lath and plaster. It was 
not the fault of general commanders that Matamoros and 
Monterey and Buena Vista and Vera Cruz and Contreras 
capitulated : it was because the nation was not in fact an 
organism. Its people were not yet of national sympa- 
thies. The states were not loyal. Some were ready to 
secede. The army was too new, too untried yet, to aff'ord 
power proportionate to the population. There were seven 
millions of people, it is true ; but out of these to get an 
army together required strenuous effort and the use of 
the manacle. 

Then, too, the wealthy citizens were afraid of a military 
dictator, and each general's hand was believed to be 
reaching for a despot's scepter. The church was alarmed, 
and warring against the Piiros, who were threatening their 
revenues. As a matter of fact, a revolution had been put 
down in the previous February only by the return of 
Santa Ana from the north. The whole republic was torn 
with religious and political jealousy and suspicion. 



GRANT AT MOLINO DEL REY 99 

In view of these facts, the entire campaign by Scott 
loses in honor while retaining its elements of almost 
criminal bravery and high generalship. The plan had 
the audacity of youth and the sober restraint of a really 
great general. The actual fighting, in the light of the 
Civil War, was inconsiderable. It would have been the 
highest mercy for Scott to have entered Mexico at once ; 
but he did not, and two bloody battles came on a month 
later. 

There now intervened a truce, during which neither 
army was to strengthen its position or secure reinforce- 
ments, though Scott was allowed to procure supplies for 
his army. Mr. Trist, on the part of the United States, 
worked zealously to secure a treaty of peace. He de- 
manded all of Texas unequivocally, and also California 
and New Mexico, for which a certain sum of money was 
to be paid. 

While this was going on, Scott, with Worth's division, 
was occupying Tacubaya, a little Indian town on the edge 
of the high ground, and about four miles from Mexico. 
From near Tacubaya a low cape of rocky wooded land 
extended irregularly into the flat land, and ended abruptly 
in a high rocky knob. This knob formed a magnificent 
natural fortress, and the castle of Chapultepec had been 
built upon it and carefully fortified. The castle, a long, 
low, thick-walled structure, covered almost the entire top. 
On the sides and at the base were other fortifications, 
and to the west and north a fine stone aqueduct made a 
formidable wall, for its arches had been filled in with 
blocks of adobe. 

Back of this fortress, and also inclosed by the aqueduct, 
was an old mill, which was reported to Scott to be Santa 
Ana's cannon foundry. It was a plain square structure, 
with a wide wall inclosing it. In the wall were sheds and 
houses. It was heavily garrisoned, and seemed to be 
highly valued by the enemy. It was the strongest for- 
tress yet held by the Mexicans, and to Quartermaster 
Grant it seemed impregnable. 

The truce was broken by the Mexicans, who were 
driving in poor peons, with arms tied behind them, to 



lOO LIFE OF GRANT 

reinforce the army ; and church bells were reported to be 
on the way to Molino del Rey to be made into cannon. 
Other preparations were also being made to strengthen 
position, and Scott, on the 4th of September, declared 
the armistice at an end, and marched upon Molino del 
Rey from Tacubaya. During the night of the 7th the 
army moved up within striking distance of the enemy, 
and at daylight another impetuous charge was made, and 
the enemy routed in a short time. 

The mill was taken and lost and retaken several times 
in a few minutes before Chapultepec seemed aware of it. 
The Americans attacked it in squads, each squad intent 
and clear-sighted. Commanders were hardly necessary 
to these men ; each sergeant, each lieutenant, was a leader; 
and it was this superior judgment and decision on the 
part of the private soldiers and subordinate officers which 
won in the fight. 

In this battle Quartermaster Grant was, as usual, in 
the forefront. " You could not keep Grant out of battle," 
said Longstreet. The duties of quartermaster could not 
shut him out of his command. He was in the first rush, 
and had an exciting time of it. His friend Dent was 
shot, and escaped being killed by Grant's intervention. 

** While pursuing the Mexicans, who were crowding 
into the mill for safety," the same witness reported, " he 
stumbled over his friend, who was lying on the floor with 
a wound in the thigh. Just as he was stooping to examine 
Dent's wound. Grant came face to face with a Mexican 
with musket raised to fire. The Mexican wheeled to 
escape, and, seeing Lieutenant Thorne standing between 
him and the door, was about to fire when Grant shouted 
a warning. The Mexican was killed by Thorne; then all 
the squad rushed through into the inclosure of the mill, 
hot on the track of the fleeing Mexicans. The charge 
had been so impetuous that those who were behind the 
parapets on the roof of the wall could not escape. They 
were treed like wild-cats on the walls. Grant was every- 
where on the field. He was always cool, swift, and un- 
hurried in battle. He was as unconcerned, apparently, 
as if it were a hail-storm instead of a storm of bullets. 




GRANT AT CHAPULTEPEC. 

The battle of Cliapultepec, showing Gran 
regiment, the Fourth Infantry, in the foi 
round on the ritrht. 



H ' 



GRANT AT MOLINO DEL REY lOI 

I had occasion to observe his superb courage under fire. 
So remarkable was his bravery that mention was made of 
it in the official reports, and I heard his colonel say : ' There 
goes a man of fire.' " 

It was not long before the cannon on Chapultepec 
began to get the range, and the captors of Molino del 
Rey were forced to evacuate the position. At that time 
Grant believed that, had the fleeing Mexicans been closely 
pursued, the Northern army could have entered Chapul- 
tepec behind them without loss of life. As it was, four 
days later volunteers were called for to make an attack 
upon Chapultepec. It seemed a desperate undertaking, 
for, in the hands of a few determined men, the castle 
would have held an army of ten thousand men at rifle- 
range. It loomed high up over the walls at its base, with 
cannon peering grimly from its parapets, with other 
pieces half-way up its sides; and yet so confident were 
the men of taking it that two volunteer columns of two 
hundred and fifty men each were made up instantly. 
They were led by Captain Silas Casey and Captain 
Samuel McKenzie. 

One division dug through the filled-up arches of the 
aqueduct on the north, and assaulted that way. The 
other went up the south side, over defenses, earthworks, 
and ditches, and scaled the walls in the very shadow of 
the thunderous cannon; and the citizens of Mexico, now 
completely disheartened, saw the gay flag of the Ameri- 
cans flame over their last fortress. Pell-mell down the 
aqueduct leading to the Balen gates, and along the aque- 
duct Veronica leading toward Tlaxpanna, the Mexicans 
retreated. General Quitman commanded the column 
moving toward Balen, and General Worth directed the 
advance toward Tlaxpanna and San Cosme. Grant was 
in the latter command, and from arch to arch of the 
aqueduct he scudded with his companions, meeting with 
little serious resistance till they came within gunshot of 
Tlaxpanna, where the aqueduct turns at right angles 
toward the city through the San Cosme gates. Grant's 
impetuous but cool and determined advance kept him 
with the hardiest of the private soldiers, and there was 



I02 LIFE OF GRANT 

but a squad of privates and one or two commissioned 
officers with him when the cannon of Tlaxpanna were 
reached. 

As usual, the flat roofs of the houses were manned and 
fortified. While waiting for reinforcements Grant did a 
little reconnoitering on his own account, and finding a 
way to the San Cosme road in the rear of the men serving 
the cannon, he led a small force there, and drove the 
enemy from their position to a second defense about 
half-way to the San Cosme gates. They were too few in 
numbers to hold this advanced position, and, together 
with Captain Horace Brooks, who led the assault. Grant 
retired to Tlaxpanna to wait reinforcements. 

At a later hour in the day he reconnoitered on the 
south side of the San Cosme road, and came to the con- 
clusion that he could use a small howitzer to good effect 
from the steeple of the Church of San Cosme, which stood 
about three hundred yards outside the San Cosme gates. 

This church had at its eastern end and front a bell- 
tower of moderate proportions, with a very narrow flight 
of steps leading to it. Up these steps the impetuous 
lieutenant and his squad tugged a small mountain howitzer, 
and, putting it together beneath the bells, began to shell 
the houses back of the gates, to the amazement and 
scandal of the Mexicans, who seemed not to understand 
that they might easily sally out and capture this audacious 
Yankee. This bold and ingenious exploit was seen by 
General Worth, who sent Lieutenant Pemberton to bring 
the quartermaster to him. 

" This is mighty fine work, sir. Every shot tells. I '11 
send you another gun." 

Grant saluted, — "Thank you, general," — and took the 
extra gun, knowing well he could not use reinforcements 
in the narrow space of the belfry. He was aware, also, 
that a lieutenant could n't by any chance know more than 
a general. 

That night ended the Mexican War. General Santa 
Aiia fled to Queretaro, leaving the city of Mexico to its 
fate. The City Council, in the absence of the national 
government, entered upon a discussion of peace measures. 



GRANT AT MOLINO DEL REY 103 

In fact, they met Scott that night, and attempted to get 
him to sign articles of peace outside the city. But Scott, 
who loved parade, but was also a loyal soldier, replied : 

" Gentlemen, I will sign anything in the city that I 
will out of it, and I intend to march into your city in 
triumph, unrestricted by any articles of capitulation." 

This he did, and it was a bitter day to the Mexicans 
when they saw the big gray old Yankee general, arrayed 
in his best uniform, and bestriding his biggest charger, 
entering their city and taking possession of their palaces. 
They were invaders. No excuses can be made to cover 
that. The war was questionable, and it is probable Scott 
felt its essential injustices ; but he was a soldier, and had 
the pride of conquest which the soldier must have as an 
incentive. He moved to the storied " halls of the Monte- 
zumas," and took command of the city. His rule was 
wise and just. No one remembers anything against him. 
He secured property against pillage, and allowed few 
reprisals, even upon those who made a fortress of their 
homes. He abolished the alcabala, or labor tax, and 
granted all reasonable requests on the part of peaceful 
citizens. 

It was soon after their entry that, in passing a church, 
a squad of soldiers were assailed from the roof. They 
rushed into a shop near by, and asked for chisels and axes 
to hew down the door. The owner of the store, a sturdy 
Englishman, Peter Green, said: "I am a resident here. 
I can't give you the tools, but I can't help your taking 
them." They got the tools, and captured the uncon- 
quered citizens. Peter Green and his wife became the 
friends of Quartermaster Grant, and during the following 
months he was a constant visitor at their house. They 
lived on San Francisco Street, and Grant was for a time 
quartered in the San Francisco church and convent 
opposite. 

At the Greens' he met a fine, wholesome family, some- 
what like his own people in Ohio, and it was a keen 
delight to take tea with them, and feel again the influence 
of a family. The daughter Sarah remembers him well, 
though she was but a child. " We thought the world of 



I04 LIFE OF GRANT 

him," she said. " He was so good-natured, and full of 
his jokes. He wore a long beard then, which seemed 
out of place on such a boy. I suppose he wanted to 
look old. He was a daily visitor at our house, and my 
people talked of him a great deal. John C. Hill used to 
come to see us, too — him that was educated by Santa 
Ana." 

Dr. John C. Hill remembers him well as a boyish fel- 
low, fond of jokes and frolic, but one who laughed little 
himself. " He was of most excellent habits, a good 
soldier, and a good man. He was an active, sturdy Httle 
fellow, much liked by all his companions. I saw him at 
the Greens', where we used to gather to have tea on 
Sunday. He was very sociable and jolly; that is ill I 
remember about him. By sociable I don't mean talka- 
tive ; he was always a man of few words ; but he liked to 
be where company was and where talk was going on." 

It was impossible for Grant to be idle. After he was 
quartered at Tacubaya he rented a bakery, and ran it for 
the benefit of the regiment. " In two months I made 
more money for the regimental fund than my pay 
amounted to during the entire war. While stationed at 
Monterey I had relieved the post in the very same way," 
he wrote at a later time. 

In May, 1848, the evacuation of Mexico was ordered; 
Mexico had conceded all the demands of the Northern 
republic. 



CHAPTER XVI 

CLOSE OF THE WAR 

GRANT was eager to return, for he felt free now to 
marry the faithful little woman in far-off Gravois. 
He had distinguished himself by brave deeds and saga- 
cious plans well carried out. He had been twice pro- 
moted for gallantry, and was returning to his bride elect 
a brevet captain. Of course, this seemed little enough. 
Luck seemed all against him, for, as he said : " I had gone 
into the battle of Palo Alto a second lieutenant, in May, 
1846, and entered the city of Mexico, sixteen months later, 
with the same rank, after having been in all the battles 
possible to one man, and in a regiment that lost more 
officers during the war than it ever had present at any 
one engagement. My regiment lost four commissioned 
officers (all senior to me) by steamboat explosions. The 
Mexicans were not so discriminating; they sometimes 
picked off my juniors." 

The grim smile in that last line is appreciated fully only 
by the eagerly ambitious young officer in the regular army 
waiting the inexorable procession of officers in promotion. 

Nevertheless, considering the large number of officers 
and the small number of men, he showed the metal of his 
inherited nature. For a lad who had no love for guns, 
or trainings, or Fourth of July anvils, to win mention and 
two brevets for gallant conduct was genuine achievement. 
He was not afraid of bullets, and no noise or hurly-burly 
could confuse him. 

General Worth made his " acknowledgments to Lieu- 
tenant Grant for distinguished services." Captain Horace 
Brooks, in his report, says : " I succeeded in reaching the 

105 



I06 LIFE OF GRANT 

fort with a few men. Here Lieutenant U. S. Grant and 
a few others of the Fourth Infantry found me. By a 
joint movement, after an obstinate resistance, the strong 
field-work was carried and the enemy's right completely 
turned." 

Major Francis Lee, commander of the Fourth Infantry 
at Chapultepec, makes the following report: "At the first 
barrier the enemy was a strong force, which rendered it 
necessary to advance with caution. This was done, and 
when the head of the battalion was within short musket- 
range, Lieutenant Grant and Captain Brooks's Second 
Artillery, with a few men of their respective regiments, 
by a handsome movement to the left turned the right 
flank of the enemy. . . . Lieutenant Grant behaved with 
distinguished gallantry on the 13th and 14th." 

Colonel Garland said : " I must not omit to call atten- 
tion to Lieutenant Grant, who acquitted himself most 
nobly upon several occasions under my observation." 
He speaks also of " a howitzer which, under the direction 
of Lieutenant Grant, quartermaster of the Fourth In- 
fantry, and Lieutenant Lendrum of the Third Artillery, 
annoyed the enemy considerably." 

Of his bravery, his activity, and his discretion there can 
be no dispute. He " went in anywhere " along the line. 
He was ambitious then. Love influenced him, perhaps. 
He had the natural desire to return to his bride bearing 
all possible honors. It was with a peculiar chagrin that 
he woke, one morning, to find a thousand dollars of regi- 
mental money stolen from a friend with whom he had 
placed it for safe-keeping. Major J. H. Gore had a trunk 
with a lock to it, and in this trunk he placed Lieutenant 
Grant's regimental funds. During the night a hole was 
cut in the tent and through the leather trunk, and the 
money taken. A report covering these facts was made 
out, and signed by Major Gore and one or two others, 
which Lieutenant Grant sent in to the War Department, 
and left matters in their hands. This gave rise to vari- 
ous exaggerated rumors of embezzlement, etc. Ulti- 
mately the facts were laid before Congress, and he was 
completely cleared of all blame. 



CLOSE OF THE WAR I07 

From a military point of view, these years of active 
service were of incalculable value. They formed his 
postgraduate course. They made theories of his instruc- 
tion at West Point realities. He saw two really great 
commanders work out military manoeuvers of unques- 
tioned brilliancy. He saw Scott cut loose from his base 
of supplies, and subsist on the country. He saw him 
parole prisoners as the cheapest and best way to be rid of 
them. He saw Taylor flank the enemy at Monterey, and 
watched him under fire, cool, unhurried. He observed 
Scott cooperating with gunboats, and directing artillery. 
Being quartermaster, he had great freedom of action in 
battle, and was able to range freely along the lines, to 
inspect siege-guns, and to see all that went on. 

From Taylor he learned the lesson of simplicity in army 
regulation, from Scott rigorous discipline. As quarter- 
master he acquired ideas upon feeding and clothing an 
army. He wrestled with difficulties. He met them hand 
to hand. He perceived the difference between disciplined 
troops moving under one man's direction, and many 
troops operating on lines not converging to a common 
purpose. All these things he saw, and they sank deep 
into his impressionable mind. He was not conscious of 
them at the time, but, as one of his fellow-officers said of 
him, " All along he was massing facts in the storehouse 
of his great memory." He forgot nothing which could 
be of use to him. He had a comprehensive view of the 
whole war, and was fitted to write a clear account of all 
the manoeuvers. 

He came in contact, also, with most of the young 
officers of the army — Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, 
Albert Sidney Johnston, Thomas Holmes, Paul O. Her- 
bert, John C. Pemberton, James Longstreet, Simon B, 
Buckner, and many others. He knew these officers very 
well. He understood their mental habits and their per- 
sonal ideas of warfare, and such things he never forgot. 
The wolves in the chaparral could instruct him as well as 
the voice of his revered general. 

That Taylor confirmed Grant in his dislike of uniform 
is probable. His soldierly attitude toward the adminis- 



I08 LIFE OF GRANT 

tration, his sturdy refusal to be made use of, his serene 
waiting for orders, and, finally, his swift and unhesitating 
execution of plans, profoundly instructed the young Heu- 
tenant. He came out of the army as well prepared to 
command as any man of his age in the two armies. 

This campaign formed, also, the boy's epic. For years 
to come he was to talk of it and to dream of it. He had 
gone, a beardless youth, from the quiet routine of West 
Point and the pleasant life at Jefferson Barracks into 
service in Texas, to become a part of an army. Then 
came wonderful marches into the unknown, with strange 
plants, flowers, fruits, on every side, and at last enormous 
mountains lifting into the burning sky. He entered 
Indian towns, primitive in habit and machinery as the 
land of the Kafir. Monterey was stormed and carried. 
Then on to wider and more marvelous campaigns, over 
the ground made storied by Cortez and his conquerors. 
Vera Cruz, dozing under the terrible sun, and Cerro 
Gordo, the sugar-loaf, became a fact, and Jalapa the 
beautiful a realized poem, set among the mountains, a 
city of cool water, wholesome fruits, and kindly people. 
Thence to Perote, seated in dust and ruins, like Egypt; 
and thence to Puebla to confront the mightiest peaks of 
our continent; and at last Mexico! 

That he loved to dwell upon these marvelous scenes 
all his friends know. It came at an age when the most 
poetic side of his nature was uppermost. An accepted 
lover, he was a part of the most daring, the most romantic, 
and the most unjust war in which the United States ever 
took part. That it broadened his thought and developed 
his power is without doubt. He had grown in resource, 
energy, and in military technique. He knew the actuali- 
ties of war. In his impressionable period he came in 
contact with two admittedly great generals, and faced 
both volunteer and regular troops. He had been in 
every battle of the army of which he was a part. 

From this activity, this romanceful, exciting warfare, he 
was loath to drop back into the dull routine of barrack 
life. He was but twenty-five years of age when the war 
closed. 



CHAPTER XVII 
grant's marriage 

THE Fourth Infantry returned to the beautiful bar- 
racks of New Orleans for a short stay, and then 
embarked for New York. But Grant, procuring another 
leave of absence, took steamer up the Mississippi River 
on the most important business of his life, which was to 
marry Miss Julia Dent. " The small lieutenant with the 
big epaulets " was returning a bronzed veteran of many 
battles and with merited promotions. He was now brevet 
captain, and felt in a position to take a wife. 

An excessively modest marriage notice appeared in 
the newspapers of St. Louis of August 22, 1848, and that 
was the only public recognition of this mighty event. 
Privately tales circulated describing the shy young soldier 
who found his long sword in the way of his leg, and who 
trembled more than at Monterey or Cerro Gordo. How- 
ever, he did not think at the time to be ever again called 
to make a speech or get married. 

Immediately after the marriage, which took place at 
the bride's home, the young people visited the Grants at 
Bethel, the Simpsons at Bantam, and old friends of the 
young lieutenant at Georgetown. Their friends recall 
the very fair-skinned, petite, and vivacious little lady who 
accompanied " Ulyss," as they still continued to call the 
rising soldier. Jesse Grant beamed with pride of his son. 
" He would stop any time in the rain to talk about Ulysses." 

Samuel Simpson of Bantam worried through a visit 
from Lieutenant Grant and a young Mexican named 
Gregory, who accompanied him. They spent a great 

109 



no LIFE OF GRANT 

deal of time throwing the lariat, and Ulysses became 
quite expert with it. He tried it on the pigs, calves, and 
cows ; nothing was exempt. This love of sport showed a 
wholesome boyishness still in the heart of the soldier. 
Gregory could not speak English, and Ulysses talked to 
him in Spanish, to the wonder of the natives. At even- 
ing, on the street before the stores, the young soldier 
submitted to questions concerning the war and Mexico, 
and often kept the crowd late into the night with the 
interest of his narrative. He talked with enthusiasm, and 
with precision, too, of all the campaigns in which he had 
been a part. The neighbors were done with sneering at 
him now ; he was recognized as a veteran and a man of 
honorable deeds ; and in Bethel the young men who had 
ridiculed him by caricaturing his new uniform now treated 
him with distinguished consideration, for the uniform was 
dignified by powder-stains and by the grime of months 
of hard life in camp and field. 

After a few care-free weeks spent among old friends, 
the young soldier took his bride to join his regiment at 
Detroit, where he arrived November 17, 1848, according 
to the "Free Press" of that day; and on November 21 
he was sent to Sacket's Harbor, in northern New York, 
on the shores of Lake Ontario, 

He was still quartermaster of his regiment, and was 
entitled to remain at Detroit; but his superior. Colonel 
Whistler, for some surly reasons, had Grant ordered to 
the bleak and undesirable post of Sacket's Harbor. 
Grant protested that his proper place as quartermaster 
was at Detroit with the regimental headquarters, but 
obeyed the order. He laid his grievances before Brevet 
Colonel Francis Lee, commander of the regiment, and it 
was forwarded to General Scott. Scott decided in Grant's 
favor, but as navigation on the lakes had closed, Grant 
postponed returning to Detroit till spring. 

There are not many people in Sacket's Harbor who 
remember Lieutenant Grant's first visit, but it happens 
that one or two credible witnesses remain to give some 
account of the young soldier. 

He settled quietly to his work, and made friends at 




House in which General Grant was married, St. Louis, Missouri. 
From a recent photograph taken expressly for this work. 



GRANTS MARRIAGE III 

once by his modest demeanor and gentle habit of com- 
mand. One of his musicians remembers him with great 
clearness, for Grant did him many favors : 

" Lieutenant Grant was a favorite among the enHsted 
men. He was a mild-spoken man, and always asked his 
men to do their duty ; he never ordered them in an offen- 
sive way. He was very sociable — always talked to a man 
freely and without putting on the airs of a superior 
officer. At that time he wore his hair rather long, but 
had shaved off his beard, and his face was serious of ex- 
pression in repose. He used to ride and drive a great 
deal, and was known as a strong, active little man, and 
could take care of himself, if necessary. He and Mrs. 
Grant used to go to little dancing-parties, but I don't 
think he ever danced. 

" He lived very modestly, — he could n't afford to do 
anything else, on his pay, — but his wife made his humble 
quarters cozy and homelike. His only dissipation was in 
owning a fast horse. He still had a passion for horses, 
and was willing to pay a high price to get a fine one." 

Few knew him, for he lived very close to his duties and 
his home. He attended church in exemplary fashion, 
and was an earnest advocate of temperance at the time. 
He helped organize a lodge of the Sons of Temperance 
at the barracks, and gave hearty encouragement to the 
order in the village by his presence. It is claimed that 
he marched once in the procession, wearing the regalia of 
the lodge. 

One of his acquaintances heard him refuse to join in 
a drinking-party once, and spoke to him about it after- 
ward. He explained his action by saying : " I heard John | 
B. Gough lecture a short time ago, and I have become J 
convinced that there is no safety from ruin by liquor * 
except by abstaining from it altogether." 

It took courage in those days to wear the white apron 
of the Sons of Temperance, but Lieutenant Grant was 
not one to dodge in battle. The life at the barracks was 
slow and uneventful, and in playing to pass away time 
Lieutenant Grant became a good checker-player, and 
worsted everybody at the barracks. There is a story in 



112 LIFE OF GRANT 

the Harbor wherein it is related that he rode over to 
Watertown occasionally to meet a redoubtable expert. It 
was ten miles over there, and generally he rode it in 
forty-five minutes; he could n't abide a slow horse. The 
champion was a shoemaker, and after some trials the two 
players settled upon a series of games and the wager. It 
was further agreed that if the series ended in a draw the 
supremacy should be determined by a foot-race. It 
turned out an even contest, amid some considerable 
interest. The rivals went out into the street and laid out 
the course. Grant was a small young fellow, and hvely 
on foot, and led the sedentary shoemaker from the start. 
He was so confident of victory that he did not take off 
his linen duster. He won the race, and, mounting his 
horse, rode home in triumph. 

There was a strong military feeling about the forts 
during those days, and old army forms were rigidly main- 
tained ; but Grant never insisted on his rank. He was 
always simple and kindly in his manner, and performed 
his duties without fuss or flurry, and was considered a good 
officer. As soon as spring opened he returned to Detroit. 
He was very glad to do this, for Sacket's Harbor at that 
time was far separated from the outside world even in 
summer; in fact, it was a cold, bleak, and inhospitable 
port at the edge of a vast wind-swept lake of ice and 
snow. Youth and love had made it a habitable spot, but 
nevertheless the world counts for something even in the 
honeymoon, and Detroit seemed a much more hospitable 
place to them both. 

The plain little frame cottage in which they made their 
home in Detroit is still standing, and is about such as a 
well-to-do carpenter might build for his own use. It 
was, indeed, all that the pay of a lieutenant at that time 
warranted. It stood on the outskirts of the town, and 
had some vines clinging about it, and some fruit-trees 
grew in the yard. The neighbors were ordinary citizens 
of the working-man's condition. The officers who were 
unmarried lived at the hotel in town, and walked to and 
fro to their meals, passing near Grant's house. 

He took up his quartermaster duties at once, steady 



grant's marriage 113 

as clockwork ; but it was not long before he had another 
driving horse. A French Canadian of the town, named 
David Cicotte, owned a small and speedy mare, which 
Grant's keen eyes had observed and coveted, and which 
he bought as soon as his means allowed. This mare, 
under Grant's training, became so speedy that he was 
soon " able to show the back of his buggy to almost any- 
thing in the town." 

His swift driving caused him to be observed and re- 
membered by the citizens of Detroit far beyond any 
other deed or characteristic. Everybody knew Lieu- 
tenant Grant (and his Cicotte mare) by sight. Otherwise 
his life was very methodical. 

" Lieutenant Grant, except for his fast driving, lived 
inconspicuously." He was considered an amiable and 
inoffensive little fellow by the merchants of the town. 
One went so far, one day, as to say that it was very queer 
business putting quartermaster's work into the hands of 
such a man, and one of his fellow-officers said : " He may 
be no good with papers, but he 's hell with a regiment." 

" He was boyish, said little, and always kept in the 
background except when drawing the lines over the back 
of his horse ; then he led the procession. He loved horses ; 
no doubt of that. He used to race Saturdays 'way out 
on Fifth Avenue, which was then a foremost racing- 
ground for the citizens. On bright midwinter days every 
driving team in Detroit would be there. Every man who 
had a horse took part, and Grant was always there with 
his little pony which he bought of Dave Cicotte." 

He was thoroughly social, but showed it in being where 
people were, rather than by entertaining them. Mrs. 
Grant, however, loved company, and was often a lively 
figure at parties and dances. Grant, who never danced, 
used to bring his wife and afterward stand around look- 
ing on. Sometimes he made a hand at a game of cards 
with others who did not dance. An old friend said : 

" I knew him as well as any one here at that time, 
probably. I met him socially and officially and in busi- 
ness. He was a gentleman in his habits and instincts, 
quiet and unobtrusive. He took his glass of liquor with 



114 LIFE OF GRANT 

the rest of us, but he was noticeable for his domestic 
habits. He was considered one of the best officers in his 
regiment." 

He had a rather amusing set-to with a young merchant 
of the town named Zack Chandler. The incident brought 
his resolute character to the notice of the citizens. The 
young officers, on their way to and from the barracks, 
were obliged to walk past Chandler's lot, and they often 
found the snow and ice lying thick across the path. They 
grumbled a good deal ; but Chandler was a big, burly 
fellow, rather proud of his physical hardihood, and no one 
was eager to make complaint against him. At last Grant, 
who knew no fear, volunteered to *' bell the cat," and with 
no sign of fear he entered complaint against Chandler. 

Chandler brought the matter to trial with voluble 
ferocity, and accused the officers of being drunk and dis- 
orderly. Grant held to his cause, however, and Chand- 
ler was fined for obstructing the walk. Everybody 
expected Chandler to whip Grant, but he did not. Some- 
thing in the quiet little man's glance informed him he 
could not safely do so. No one has ever said that Grant 
knew fear, or that he ever acknowledged himself whipped. 
He was not a fighting man, but he had a way of keeping 
a rowdy at arm's length. 

His only time of trepidation seemed to be when called 
upon to make a speech. At a dinner given to Colonel 
Grayson, Grant was called on for a toast. In noticeable 
tremor, the young officer rose and said, " I can face the 
music, but I can't make a speech," and gave this senti- 
ment: "The Grayson Guards! should their services be 
required, may they be rendered in proportion to the con- 
fidence placed in them and their worthy commander." 
This was neat, admirable in reserve, and covered the 
ground. As for his ability to " face the music," every 
man of the Fourth knew he spoke the truth. No young 
officer had a higher record as a brave man. He never 
went further, than that phrase in praise of himself. In 
June, 1851, he left his comfortable quarters at Detroit, 
and returned to Sacket's Harbor. 




*»^'"*- 



'""***• 



^£^ 



• • ^•■■^ "^Ta 



iM, 



West front of fortification and Ixirracks, Fort Wayne, Detroit. 

iTi a photograph loaned by Captain E. D. Smitliofthe Fifteenth Infantry, The building shown was erected in 184? 
Irant first went to Detroit, and is the only one now standing at Fort Wayne that ciuild have been in existence when ( 
tationed there. 









nffii-(^r«' linrrnrl,-« .^nrlret's Tl.irhor. New \'ork. 



grant's marriage 115 

It was a dull life there on the edge of Ontario, after 
the little round of possible gaieties had been traversed a 
dozen times. The change of barracks did not greatly 
change his duties. Grant transacted his duties promptly 
and well each day, and formed a silent member of all 
meetings of the officers. In the mess-room he was con- 
sidered a good fellow, but a little slow as a companion. 
He talked a good deal of the Mexican War, however, and 
at such times grew very earnest and graphic, and im- 
pressed others with his power to present in an orderly 
way his conception of the campaigns. His companions 
often said he gave the clearest account of the Mexican 
War they had ever heard. 

He went out socially very little, though the officers 
often dropped in to enjoy the cozy home Mrs. Grant had 
conjured out of very plain barrack rooms. As a con- 
siderate husband, a good citizen, and a faithful officer he 
spent some six months in the post. He was comfortable 
and happy, but he had scarcely resigned himself to the 
life of a soldier. He was getting nowhere ; he was merely 
dozing in a snug corner. Beneath his quiet manner his 
companions, the more discerning of them, saw in him a 
" restless, energetic man." 

But a change came into his quiet life. An order ar- 
rived transferring him to the Pacific coast, which was 
almost as far away as Africa is to-day. He faced here 
the question of a soldier's life in a new fashion. He had 
developed no special love for the army, though he had 
ceased actively to plan getting out of it. This order 
brought up again the impulse to resign and go into some- 
thing else. He had those moments of profound thought 
which marked him at West Point, and in his face the care 
of a man and a father had begun to write its lines. He 
seriously meditated resigning at that time. 

It was out of the question to think of taking his wife 
with him on the long and dangerous trip across the 
Isthmus. His oldest child, named Frederick Dent Grant, 
was nearly two years of age. And so with great reluc- 
tance and in deep depression he left Sacket's Harbor for 



Il6 LIFE OF GRANT 

the coast, while Mrs. Grant returned to the home of Jesse 
Grant in Bethel, where her second child was born. Under 
the circumstances, it was impossible for Mrs. Grant to go 
with her husband, and the bitter sorrow of parting from 
his little son and his wife (soon to be a mother a second 
time) brought the stern realities of a soldier's life very 
close to Lieutenant Grant. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

LIEUTENANT GRANT IS ORDERED TO THE COAST 

THE Fourth Infantry assembled at Governor's Island, 
New York Bay, and thence took ship for the Isth- 
mus. The steamer Ohio was in command of Captain 
Schenck, who was able afterward to recall the young 
man. 

" Major Bonnevelle was in command, and Grant was 
quartermaster. For the first week I did not have much 
to say to him. He was then a quiet, undemonstrative 
man, and took matters just as they came without com- 
ment, though when called upon he never seemed to be at 
a loss for an opinion and a good reason to back it. Bonne- 
velle was hasty and uncertain in his action, and gave 
cause for disagreements, and it was a customary practice 
to refer these disputes to Grant as arbitrator. His rulings 
were distinguished by particular good sense. 

" He was accustomed to walk the deck late at night, 
and so we came at last to walk up and down the deck, 
discussing such matters as came up from time to time. 
He seemed to me to be a man of an uncommon order of 
intelligence. He had a good education, and what his 
mind took hold of it grasped strongly and thoroughly 
digested." 

Nothing which the young soldier had ever done sur- 
passed the energy, resource, coolness, and daring of cross- 
ing the Isthmus. It was equal to a campaign against a 
foreign foe. It was a fight against fever, cholera, poison- 
ous plants, bad water, inefficient labor, and insubordinate 
soldiery. As quartermaster he was forced to take the 

117 



1 i8 LIFE OF GRANT 

brunt of all shortcomings in transportation and all com- 
plaints concerning supplies. 

It was a perilous time of year to attempt such a pas- 
sage, but that made little difference to the authorities in 
Washington. Quartermaster Grant, luckily, was experi- 
enced in the care of men in tropical climates, and was 
prepared for the worst. The OJiio delivered its freight at 
Aspinwall, and let loose a swarm of gold-seekers as well 
as soldiers. The heat was appalling, and Grant was sleep- 
lessly active in getting his charges out of the low-lying 
port at once. All was confusion. The town of Aspinwall 
had sprung up since the beginning of the gold excitement, 
and had scarcely acquired law, and certainly was without 
order. 

The railway was completed only to the Chagres River, 
eighteen miles away. The steamship company had con- 
tracted with the government to take the troops across the 
Isthmus, but when they arrived at Chagres, Quartermaster 
Grant found that no mules had been provided by the agent 
of the company, and that in the rush it was really impos- 
sible to secure any. The agent was supine and lifeless 
in the business, and Grant was forced to take charge of 
the whole movement. 

The regiment marched directly toward Panama, while 
the band and the officers' wives, accompanied by Quarter- 
master Grant, went down the river toward Cruces. Upon 
arriving at Cruces, he found the agent of the transporta- 
tion company unable to comply with his engagement. 

This threw upon the young quartermaster the entire 
responsibility of transporting his passengers and the regi- 
mental baggage, and tested his energy and his practical 
experience as severely as any campaign in which he had 
been engaged. He grappled with the problem with 
undaunted courage. 

At last he got his heterogeneous cavalcade in motion. 
The wives of the officers he started at once toward the 
western port, for the cholera was in Cruces. The others 
he put under way a few days later. He himself stayed 
behind to attend to the stores. He took care of the 
health of the soldiers and of everybody in the company. 



LIEUTENANT GRANT IS ORDERED TO THE COAST IIQ 

His position was very hard, and at one time everything 
seemed to depend upon his personal energy. One disaster 
followed another. No sooner were the passengers brought 
safely across the Isthmus than the cholera broke out on 
shipboard. More than one hundred and fifty men died 
of it, thirty-seven in one day, among them Major J. H. 
Gore, with whom Grant had been most intimately asso- 
ciated in Mexico and in Detroit. The passengers were 
panic-stricken, and the men, appalled at their new foe, 
muttered alarm and wrath. In the midst of all the con- 
fusion and fear, which amounted to frenzy, Quartermaster 
Grant remained cool, resolute, watchful, and sympathetic. 
Nothing could flurry him or anger him or make him 
afraid. 

He had heavy responsibility on his hands. It was his 
duty to provide hospital facilities and medicinal supplies, 
and also to see to the disposal of the dead ; but he did 
these things with as much system as though he had been 
quartered at Detroit. There were from fifty to sixty 
dangerously sick people on board all the time, with 
twelve or fifteen of them dying daily, and with only a 
ship's deck to take care of them on. " Grant seemed to 
be a man of iron, so far as endurance went, seldom sleep- 
ing, and then only two or three hours at a time. Never- 
theless, his work was always done, and his supplies always 
ample and at hand. He seemed to take a personal interest 
in each sick man ; and when one considers the situation, 
the hospital accommodations he provided were wonderful. 
He was like a ministering angel to us all," said one who 
passed through this terrifying trip. 

The captain of the Golden Gate was also a man of de- 
cision and character, and an officer of wide experience in 
the treatment of Asiatic cholera. He refused to sail until 
all the passengers had been landed and all clothing fumi- 
gated and the ship thoroughly overhauled. These vigor- 
ous measures put an end to the plague, and the Golden 
Gate passed on her way to San Francisco without further 
mishap. 

Upon arrival in San Francisco Bay, a camp was estab- 
Hshed at Benicia, which was but a short distance out of 



I20 LIFE OF GRANT 

San Francisco, and the regiment stayed several weeks in 
this camp, waiting for a steamer to take it to Oregon. In 
the early autumn it reached permanent quarters at Co- 
lumbia Barracks, a post on the Columbia River not far 
from the site of the present city of Portland, which was at 
that time a small settlement of woodsmen. The buildings 
of the post had been erected by Grant's friend and room- 
mate, Rufus Ingalis. It consisted of a number of rudely 
and hastily constructed log houses. The houses, furni- 
ture, and fixtureware were all made out of green wood 
with the ax. The surrounding country was a wilderness, 
peopled, where it was settled at all, by Indians or whites 
of the rough-and-ready frontier type. The few manu- 
factured articles in use were brought around the Horn 
in sailing-vessels, or across the plains and mountains in 
wagons. 

The records of the post show that Grant, in spite of all 
discouragements, performed his duties as quartermaster 
faithfully and well. He built houses, repaired wagons, 
and fitted out expeditions. Under this last head it is 
recorded that in July, 1853, he supplied Captain George 
B. McClellan with transportation and all things needful 
for the first survey of the Northern Pacific Railway. 

He was kind and quiet, but could not be imposed upon. 
He was quick and resolute of action, when necessary. 
Once when a drunken purser of a steamboat was dis- 
turbing the audience at the little theater at the post. Grant 
made his way to the ruffian, seized him by the collar, and 
put him out with deftness and despatch. No man pre- 
sumed to dispute his orders, small as he seemed. He 
was a good soldier, and loved order and good discipline. 



CHAPTER XIX 

GRANT IS PROMOTED, BUT RESIGNS 

1IEUTENANT GRANT served just one year at Fort 
^ Vancouver. During this time he lived and messed 
with his West Point room-mate, Rufus Ingalls, who was 
stationed there as depot quartermaster. Horseback-riding 
was the chief diversion of both Grant and Ingalls. They 
kept a pair of horses on the south bank of the Columbia, 
opposite the post, and when life grew insupportable at 
the fort " they sometimes crossed the river, and rode on 
horseback to Oregon City, twenty miles up the Wil- 
lamette. Portland was then too unimportant to attract 
their attention." 

It was a dull and dreary year to the young soldier. 
The routine of an army post is the same everywhere, no 
matter how its surroundings may vary. Oregon at that 
time was a wilderness, and a gloomy wilderness in winter- 
time. For six months of the year it is a land of rain, of 
moss, of dripping trees. The mists rise from the warm 
sea, float inward, break against the Cascade Range of moun- 
tains, and fall in unending torrents over the steaming earth. 
There are weeks when the sun is scarcely felt, when the 
glorious mountains are hidden, and the world is of the 
color of gray moss and falling rain. 

Grant did his duties and carried himself with his usual 
quiet dignity, but he was unusually silent and grave. He 
had not the careless nature which makes light of such a 
situation, although he was never a man to complain. He 
had few intimate friends, and no enemies. 

How deeply he felt this separation from his wife and 

121 



122 LIFE OF GRANT 

his two little sons will never be known, but the memory 
of an old artillery sergeant holds one revealing incident. 

He had procured for the sergeant a position as agent 
of the United States Ordnance Department, and on the 
morning after the mail which brought the commission. 
Grant " happened by " the sergeant's little cottage to 
witness and enjoy his delight. When about to leave, he 
said: " Oh, I, too, had a letter last night " ; thereupon he 
drew from his pocket a letter, and opened it out. He 
did not read it to the sergeant, but showed him the last 
page, whereon his wife had laid his baby's hand and traced 
the outlines with a pencil to show its size. He folded the 
letter quickly, and left without speaking a word; but his 
form shook, and his eves were wet. 

He received few letters. There was a period of several 
months, after leaving New York, during which he was cut 
off from all news of his wife, and this at a time when his 
anxiety was peculiarly intense ; and yet he uttered no 
complaint, and was always mindful of others. He secured 
an appointment for Sergeant lickerson, and helped Drum- 
Major Elderkin and his wife to make a home in the post. 
Beneath liis impassive exterior he was known to be ten- 
derly sympathetic to all need and suffering in others. 
Those who saw him daily while he was stationed at Van- 
couver state that he carried himself with dignity, and was 
highly respected by the garrison. 

" He used to ride up to Drum-Major Elderkin's house 
almost every morning, and say, ' Good morning,' and 
gallop off into the woods. He took great interest in the 
little family of the drum-major, and helped them in any 
way possible. His habits were very regular. He was 
one of the kindest and best men I ever knew. He seemed 
to be always sad ; that is, he never seemed jovial and 
hearty, like most of the officers. I thought him a very 
active man, and a thorough soldier; that is the impression 
he made on me. I loved him, for he was always kind to 
me, and always just." 

He felt the separation from his family the more for 
being naturally domestic of habit. His wife and children 
occupied much of his thoughts when off duty. Coarse 







.* 



"^■^1. 






-^^%/ 



risviT 



S'V 



■.A' 



The house in which Grant lived at Fort Vancouver in 1852 and 1853. 
ledrawn from a photograph loaned by Colonel Thomas M. Anderson, present commandant of Fort Vancouver. 








Fort Vancouver, 
edrawn from a painting by Dr. Covington, now owned by Captain James A. Buchanan of the Eleventh Infantry. 



GRANT IS PROMOTED, BUT RESIGNS 1 23 

stories, profanity, roistering — all those things, which some 
of his brother officers found entertaining, were distasteful 
to him. 

The winter dragged slowly on, and he began to plan a 
summer campaign. He felt the necessity of doing some- 
thing, not merely because he knew he would be the better 
for it himself, but also because he hoped to make money 
enough to enable him to send for his family. He looked 
about for something which he could engage in without 
interfering with his duties at the post. There was nothing 
to do but go back to the employment of his boyhood; he 
determined to farm. 

The opportunities were ample and the prospect alluring. 
" Potatoes were worth eight or nine dollars a bushel ; and 
Grant, taking Lieutenant Wallen into partnership, deter- 
mined to go into a potato speculation. Together they 
rented a piece of ground from the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany, and bought a team from an emigrant, and set to 
work to plow and plant the ground. They planted a 
large patch, and raised a famous crop of fine potatoes ; 
but every one else seemed to have raised potatoes also, 
and the crop could not be sold at any price. The per- 
plexed farmers had finally to pay some of their neighbors 
to haul the potatoes away out of a magazine that was 
borrowed from the commandant of the post!" The crop 
was ultimately a nuisance. 

Grant says, in addition, that the gray old Columbia 
swept over the field in the autumn, and carried a large 
part of the crop out to sea. However, it saved the trouble 
of digging them. 

He also went into a partnership with Rufus Ingalls to 
cut and ship ice to San Francisco. This, it is related, 
came to nothing. Adverse winds held the brig back till 
some ships from Sitka unloaded their cargoes on the 
market, and ice was of no great value. He next became 
interested in buying cattle and hogs and shipping them to 
San Francisco. 

"We continued this business," said his partner, "until 
both of us lost all the money we had. He was the per- 
fect soul of honor and truth, and believed every one as 



124 LIFE OF GRANT 

artless as himself. I never knew a stronger or better 

man." 

In August, 1853, he was promoted to a full captaincy, 
and ordered to Fort Humboldt to fill a vacancy caused 
by the death of Captain Bliss, famous as General Taylor's 
adjutant in the Mexican War. " Early in October Cap- 
tain Grant started for Fort Humboldt, California, to take 
command of his company. . . . The post was two hun- 
dred and forty miles north of San Francisco, and the 
buildings stood on a plateau affording a splendid view of 
Humboldt Bay. The only town in the vicinity was 
Eureka, which contained but a sawmill and twenty 
houses. 

" Communication with San Francisco was solely by 
water, and mails were very irregular. The officers looked 
out anxiously every morning for a sail, and, when one 
appeared, galloped down to Eureka for their letters or a 
stray newspaper. 

" The line captain's duties were less onerous than the 
quartermaster's had been, and the discipline was far more 
rigid and irksome. No greater misfortune could have 
happened to Captain Grant than this enforced idleness." 

He had little work to occupy his time, he was far 
separated — hopelessly separated — from his family, and 
had an uncongenial commander in Colonel Buchanan. 
He took little intere.st in the dancing, hunting, fishing, 
and other diversions of the officers, and, above all, the 
futility of the whole life weighed upon him. 

" The result was a common one : he took to drink." 

He had learned the use of liquor in the Mexican War, 
along with smoking and chewing tobacco, but up to this 
time there is little reliable evidence of excess in its use. 

Even now, at Fort Humboldt, " he drank much less 
than other officers whose reputation for temperance was 
unsullied ; but with his pecuHar organization a little did 
the fatal work of a great deal." A single glass of liquor 
visibly affected him. " He was guilty of no gross inde- 
corum or misdeed, but he fell so far under the influence 
of his insidious love for it that he was told to place his 
resignation in the hands of the commandant, to be for- 



GRANT IS PROMOTED, BUT RESIGNS 12$ 

warded to Washington at the first repetition of the 
offense. It was a notice to ' reform or resign.' He 
said, ' I will resign and reform.' He sent in his resigna- 
tioni to take effect July 31, 1854."* 

According to the records of the adjutant-general's 
office, Captain Grant accepted his commission and sent 
in his resignation on the same day. This would seem to 

* grant's resignation. 

The following papers are every line on file in the adjutant-general's office 
at Washington, concerning the resignation of U. S. Grant from the army in 
1854. These papers were copied in the immediate presence of General 
Ruggles, the adjutant-general, in February, 1897. 

Grant acknowledges his commission April li, 1854: 

"Colonels. Cooper: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of 
my commission as captain in the 4th Infantry, and my acceptance of the 
same. I am, Colonel, 

" Very respectfully, your obt. servt., 

" U. S. Grant, 
" Capt. 4th Infantry." 

On the same day he wrote the following letter : 

" Ft. Humboldt, Humboldt Barracks, 
"April II, 1854. 
"Colonel: I very respectfully tender my resignation of my commission 
as an officer of the army and request that it may take eflfect from the 31st 
July next. I am, Colonel, 

" Very respectfully, your obt. servt., 
" U. S. Grant, 
" Capt. 4th Infantry. 
"To Robert C. Buchanan." 

On the back of this is the following indorsement in Grant's own hand- 
writing: , ., „ 

" Ft. Humboldt, April 11, 1854. 

" Capt. U. S. Grant, 

" 4th Infantry. 
" Respectfully forwarded with the recommendation that it be accepted. 

" Robert C. Buchanan, 
" Brevet Lt. Col. 
" Capt. 4th Infantry, Commanding Headquarters Detachment. 

" Ft. Humboldt, Cal., Apl. 11, 1854. 
" Received Headquarters May 20, 1854. 

" Headquarters Department of the Pacific, 
"San Francisco, Apl. 22, 1854. 

"Approved and respectfully forwarded. 

^^ r / „ j^^^ g Wool, 

" Major-Genernl. 



126 LIFE OF GRANT 

give color to the story that Colonel Buchanan forced his 
resignation. Other than the mere coincidence in the date, 
there is not one line on file in the War Department to 
indicate why he resigned or what his motives were. His 
father wrote at once, upon the official announcement, to 
inquire of Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War, if it 
were true that his son had resigned, and asking why he 
had resigned.* To this the department replied, inclosing 

" Headquarters of the Army, 
"New York, 26th May, 1854. 
" Respectfully forwarded by command of Major-General Scott. 

"(Signed) Irwin McDowell. 

" It is respectfully recommended that Captain Grant's resignation be 
accepted to take effect as tendered July 31, 1854. The enclosed paper dated 
May 29, shows the state of Capt. Grant's accounts with the Treasury. 

" Adjutant-General's Office, May 30, 1854. 
" S. Cooper, Adjutant-General." 

And the final indorsement has a peculiar historical interest: 

"Accepted as tendered. 

"Jefferson Davis, 
" Secretary of War. 
"June 2, 1854." 

The paper mentioned stated that Captain Grant's accounts were entirely 
in order, and that he owed the government nothing, and there was no fault 
to find with his management of affairs as quartermaster. 

It will thus be seen that Captain Grant not only went out of the service 
with his accounts in order, but that no hint of his reasons for leaving the 
service appears in the adjutant-general's office. Nothing stands against 
his good name in the office of the adjutant-general of the United States army. 

* " Bethel, Claremont County, June i, 1854. 
" Hon. Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War. 

"Dear Sir: Your letter of the 7th instant enclosing acceptance of the 
resignation of my son Captain U. S. Grant, was received a few days ago 
through Thomas A. EUyson. That was the first intimation I had of his 
intention to resign. 

"If it is consistent with your powers and the good of the servis I will be 
much gratified if you would reconsider and withdraw the acceptance of his 
resignation and grant him a six months leave that he may come home and 
see his family. 

" I never wished him to leave the servis. I think after spending so much 
time to qualify himself for the army and spending so many years in the servis 
he will be poorly qualified for the pursuits of private life. 

" He has been eleven years an officer, was in all the battles of Generals 
Taylors and Scotts except Buena Vista, never absent from his posts during 
the Mexican War and has never had a leave of six months, would it then be 
asking too much for him to have such leave that he may come home and 
make arrangements for taking his family with him to his post. 



GRANT IS PROMOTED, BUT RESIGNS 127 

Grant's acceptance, saying that the department was not 
informed of Captain Grant's motives. 

According to another account, furnished by Colonel 
Thomas Anderson, the present commandant at Fort 
Vancouver, Rufus Ingalls, Captain Grant's most intimate 
friend, said : " Captain Grant, finding himself in dreary 
surroundings, without his family, and with but little to 
occupy his attention, fell into dissipated habits, and was 
found, one day, too much under the influence of liquor to 
properly perform his duties. For this offense Colonel 
Buchanan demanded that he should resign, or stand trial. 
Grant's friends at the time urged him to stand trial, and 
were confident of his acquittal ; but, actuated by a noble 
spirit, he said he would not for all the world have his wife 
know that he had been tried on such a charge. He there- 
fore resigned his commission, and returned to civil life." 

Steadily, silently, there had crept ijito his brain a 
craving for stimulants which had mastered him. It was 
an appetite, and not a dissipation. According to reliable 
testimony, he remained the same clean-spoken, consider- 
ate, and honorable gentleman through it all. His habit 
of drink did not touch upon the inner sweetness and 
purity of the man's nature, but it occasionally mastered 

" I will remark that he has not seen his family for over two years and has 
a son nearly two years' old he has never seen. I suppose in his great anxiety 
to see his family he has been ordered to quit the servis. 

" Please write me and let me know the results of this request and, 

" Respectfully, your obt. servt., 

"J. R. Grant." 

On the back of this appears the following indorsements : 

" Capt. Grant's tender of resignation assigns no reason for his wish to 
leave the service and the motives which influenced him to take the step are 
not known; he merely desired that the resignation should take effect July 31, 
1854, and it was accepted accordingly by the Secretiiry of War, June 2, and 
the notification sent out to the army same day. 

" Respectfully submitted, 

" W. G. Freeman, 
" Acting Adjutant-General. 
"June 37, 1854." 

Below this appears, in the handwriting of Jefferson Davis, the final 
indorsement : 

" Answer with endorsement. J* *^' 



128 LIFE OF GRANT 

him, and suddenly he became aware that men considered 
him a drunkard. As far back as his first stay in Sacket's 
Harbor he had known his danger, and had fought against 
his enemy. 

The resignation came when he was ill prepared for it. 
Unlucky speculations had left him with but little ready 
money, and the little he had saved was in the hands of 
elusive debtors. There were all the elements of tragedy 
in the life of the young soldier at this time, when, upon 
arrival in San Francisco, he found one debtor away and 
the other unable or unwilling to pay. He was left abso- 
lutely without a dollar. 

This final disappointment plunged him into dejection 
which was almost despair. He had no money, and his 
name was the subject of ill remark. Not one of those he 
had helped seemed ready to help him, now that he needed 
aid worse than ever before in his life. In such condition 
he walked the streets of San Francisco. 

Up to this moment his life had been without keen dis- 
appointment or sorrow. He had gone steadily and satis- 
factorily from cadet to lieutenant, and from lieutenant to 
captain. But now came days which set ineffaceable lines 
of gravity and care upon his face. His youth was past, 
and he was facing unsettled middle life with no trade or 
profession by which to earn a living for himself and those 
dependent upon him. At this time his friends pitied him 
and his acquaintances avoided him. 

Robert Allen, chief quartermaster of the coast, heard 
some men talking of him, and in that way learned of his 
presence in San Francisco. He set forth to find him, for 
he liked him, as did every one who really knew him. 

" He found him, at last, in a cheap little miners' hotel 
called the ' What Cheer House.' Grant was up in a little 
garret room which contained only a small cot, a pine table, 
and one chair. 

" There he sat, a young man of thirty-two, in utter 
misery. His head was bowed, and as his friend entered 
he lifted a haggard and sorrowful face. 

" ' Why, Grant, what are you doing here ? ' asked Allen 
of the shattered, gloomy young man. 



GRANT IS PROMOTED, BUT RESIGNS 129 

" ' Nothing,' he repHed. ' I 've resigned from the army. 
I 'm out of money, and I have no means of getting home.' 

" ' Well,' said Allen, at once, ' I can arrange for your 
transportation without trouble, and I guess we can raise 
some money for you.' 

" He took hold of the matter vigorously, and through 
him Grant procured transportation to New York, and 
money enough to pay for his daily needs." 

He reached New York forlorn and practically penniless. 
He had just money enough to carry him to Watertown, 
where he hired a horse and rode to Sacket's Harbor. One 
of his recreant debtors lived there, and from him Grant 
expected to extract some money. He failed to obtain 
even an interview, and returned to New York in worse 
condition than ever. Some days later he called upon his 
old classmate, Captain Simon B. Buckner, who was recruit- 
ing officer in New York City, and confided to him his 
distress. He had written for money, but had not heard a 
word, and his money was gone. Captain Buckner became 
security for his hotel bill during his stay in New York. 
He wrote again to the West for money, and at last re- 
ceived enough to enable him to reach his father's home. 
It is claimed that before he left New York several of his 
old comrades on Governor's Island made up a purse of 
fifty dollars to help him clear himself of all bills. 

There was little joy in the home-coming. If reputable 
neighbors are to be believed, Jesse Grant received him 
grimly. He was deeply humiliated by this untoward 
return of his eldest son. It seemed to falsify all the 
omens and prophecies of which he had boasted in years 
gone by. At this moment he saw nothing further to hope 
for in honor of his son Ulysses, and he turned away to 
Simpson and Orvil. They were to uphold the honor and 
credit of the Grant house. " West Point spoiled one of 
my boys for business," he said, and Ulysses replied: "I 
guess that 's about so." 

The gentle mother, on the contrary, was glad to see 
him out of the service. She seemed to understand the 
dangers and temptations of a soldier's life in barracks, and 
found deep relief in his return to civil life and to his family. 



l;50 LIFE OF GRANT 

After a short time spent with his parents in regaining 
heahh and good cheer, the ex-captain took his way to St. 
Louis to his wife and children. This was in the late 
summer of 1854, and he was thirty-two years of age. In 
this one thing was hope : he had found out his worst 
enemy and his most marked weakness, and was prepared 
to do battle, and resolved to conquer this enemy within 
the gates, if it took a lifetime. 



I 



CHAPTER XX 

CAPTAIN GRANT TURNS FARMER 

GRANT found St. Louis and Georgetown much the 
same as when he had last visited Missouri. The city 
was a little larger, the clearings on the Gravois a little more 
numerous, and the fields a little wider; that was all. 
Colonel Dent still owned White Haven, and was living 
there at the time his son-in-law returned. 

That autumn and winter Captain Grant (as the neigh- 
bors at once called him) lived at the Dent homestead, and 
took a hand in anything which needed to be done about 
the place. The welcome extended to him by Colonel 
Dent could not be expected to be warmer than that of 
his own father, but he at least gave Ulysses a place under 
his roof. Probably it was some time during this winter 
that Dent set aside some sixty or eighty acres of land for 
Mrs. Grant, and told Captain Grant to make such home 
upon it as he could. No deed is on record ; it was merely 
a verbal transfer. 

The task to which Captain Grant then set himself was 
not an easy one : it was to start from the stump at thirty- 
two years of age. Abraham Lincoln rose out of humbler 
conditions, but he had no trial more difficult than Grant's 
return to severe manual labor after having been fifteen 
years accustomed to the routine and security of army 
life. He began at the bottom, as a laborer, without 
money, tools, or horses. He was among strangers, and 
estranged from his father and brothers, who regarded him, 
at the best, as criminally improvident. 

Jesse Grant, apparently, left Ulysses for a time to his 

131 



132 LIFE OF GRANT 

own resources. He had the reputation among his neigh- 
bors of being a hard man and a close man, though a just 
one. Again and again he had helped his son until his 
patience had at last given out, and Ulysses was forced to 
look elsewhere for aid in his hard task of hewing a home 
out of the forest. 

However, these favorable coincidences are to be no- 
ticed : He was returning to his boyhood occupation in a 
land almost identical in character with that of Brown 
County, Ohio. Its climate, soil, and products were quite 
the same, and his experience as a farm-boy in George- 
town served him in good stead. It was, withal, a beauti- 
ful country, this Missouri upland, with ridges of splendid 
oaks and elms rolling like waves against the sky, inter- 
spersed with sunny slopes of fields, and lined with streams 
of fine clear water. 

The people were, however, more markedly Southern 
in character than those of his native county, and many 
were slaveholders. Their houses were modifications of 
the woodsman's cabin, like those in the Ohio Valley, with 
the wide galleries of the South added. Some of them 
are standing to-day, picturesque and hospitable in ap- 
pearance, consistent and dignified as types of farm archi- 
tecture. They were, however, farm-houses, not mansions. 
Around most of them stood little shanties of hewn logs, 
in which the slaves lived in picturesque squalor. The 
abolition movement was in fervid heat at this time, and 
had affected some of the most advanced thinkers to the 
point of liberating their bondsmen ; but Colonel Dent and 
most of his immediate neighbors remained slaveholders to 
the last. 

Grant made a full hand about the farm during that 
first year. He bound wheat, in the good old fashion, 
behind stalwart, shining negro cradlers. He helped with 
the plowing and in gathering the corn. The farmers' sons 
of the neighborhood quite generally worked with the 
negroes in the field, and they respected Captain Grant 
for his manly resolution. The ex-soldier earned his bread 
in the sweat of his brow during those long, sultry weeks, 
but uttered no word of complaint. He began to reach 




Mrs. U. S. Grant and lier two eldest children, 
Frederick D. and Ulysses S., Jr., about 1854. 

F"rom a daguerreotype taken at St. Louis, now owned by Mr. U. S. Grant, Jr., 
and reproduced here with his permissioii. 



CAPTAIN GRANT TURNS FARMER 133 

out and lay hold of means to begin farming on his own 
account. 

In the early fall of 1855 he set forth to build a cabin 
for his family upon the land which the colonel had set 
aside for his use, and to that purpose he began to fell 
trees and to hew logs. Day after day he toiled among 
the oaks. Hour by hour the ringing stroke of his ax 
uttered his resolution. He was a powerful man with the 
ax, and the deft swing and sharp impact of the shining 
blade left a clean, smooth cut. Around him the squirrels 
watched the ripening nuts and scampered through the fall- 
ing leaves; and when his wife sat near to watch him, and 
the children played with the white and amber chips, the 
scene was far-reaching in its significance. Over and over 
again had this drama been enacted in the long march of 
his ancestors from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi 
River, with their toil softened and made light in this wise 
by the brooding tenderness of women and the laughter of 
children. Nothing that he had done in all his campaigns, 
up to that time, touched such heights of resolution and 
manly independence as this single-handed assault on the 
ranked oaks and elms. 

At last the logs were ready to be put into place, and 
invitations were sent out for the "raising." The calls 
were readily answered, for Captain Grant had made a 
favorable impression upon the neighbors by his hard work 
and his unassuming manners. The Sappingtons, the 
Longs, and the Wrights sent in hands, both white and 
black, Fenton Long took a corner. Captain Grant an- 
other, and at a third was stationed a powerful negro from 
White Haven; for the notching and fitting at the corners 
required men who were quick on their feet and strong and 
true with the ax. Two half-days put the logs in place, 
and then Grant was able to go on with the inside work. 
He laid the floor, put in the window-panes, and helped 
to shingle the roof. Everything within his power he did 
with his own hands, to save expense. 

At last it was finished, and having in mind the rather 
grandiose title of Colonel Dent's house, and foreseeing 
toil and close economy. Grant, with quizzical humor. 



134 LIFE OF GRANT 

called his new home " Hardscrabble." It was a large 
cabin of four rooms, rather more ambitious than the cabin 
homes of many young married people of the neighbor- 
hood. The furniture was scanty and plain, but fireplaces 
were wide and wood plenty, and a sort of rude comfort 
was, after all, possible within its walls. 

Charles Ford, the manager of the United States Ex- 
press in St. Louis, was an old-time acquaintance from 
Sacket's Harbor, and through his aid Captain Grant 
secured on easy terms a very fine span of express horses. 

The acquirement of a team set him up in business. He 
began at once hauling wood into St. Louis and props to 
the coal-mines near by, and was able also to do some 
teaming for his father-in-law. His horses not merely 
helped him to earn money — they were a pleasure to him. 
He treated them as pets, and they appreciated it ; they 
would do anything for him. He taught many a man how 
to use a horse. 

The exploits of this famous team provoked banter. 
One Sunday morning, as Grant sat upon the veranda of 
the elder Sappington's house, the old man said : " Cap- 
tain, I hear you hauled sixty bushels of wheat to the city 
some days ago." 

" I did," replied Grant, concisely. 

" I can't believe it; it don't seem reasonable." 

"I tell you what I '11 do, Mr. Sappington," replied 
Grant, quietly. " I will put on sixty bushels of wheat, 
and you do the same. If I get to St. Louis without out- 
side help, and you don't, I am to have both loads. If 
you succeed, and I don't, you 're to have both loads." 

The older man smiled, but shook his head. " Well," 
he said, " I don't see how you do it." 

Henry C. Wright at that time owned a grist-mill not 
far from the Dent farm, and recalls many interesting 
scenes of Grant's life in Gravois. 

" Captain Grant used to come almost every week to 
my mill to get corn and wheat ground. The first time 
I ever saw him was at a sale. He was a small, thin man 
then, with a close-cropped brown beard. He had no 
overcoat, I remember, and he wore tall boots, quite 



CAPTAIN GRANT TURNS FARMER 135 

unlike any others in the neighborhood. He was living 
with old man Dent at that time, and his cabin had not 
been built. I think he was at the sale to buy some 
hogs." 

This second winter was spent in teaming, and in the 
spring he began to clear the land for a crop. There was 
little money to be had by the wealthiest farmers, and 
none at all by Captain Grant, except by way of prop- 
hauling and wood-selling. As a matter of fact, he hauled 
more props than wood. His neighbors all spent a good 
deal of time clearing land, and burned a great deal of it. 
But Grant burned no timber; he made everything count. 
He worked very hard, the next spring, planting wheat, 
corn, and garden-stuff. His methods were orderly and 
his tools and stock well cared for. He had no bad habits 
except a liking for whisky. Drink was said to be his 
weakness, but his neighbors saw little of it at the time. 
He was always a gentleman, and a kind, indulgent father. 
He loved horses and cattle, and every animal about his 
farm was a pet. He had not an enemy that any one ever 
knew of, and he never had any trouble with his neigh- 
bors. 

Captain Grant soon won the respect of the better class 
of his neighbors. All who met him socially liked him. 
They perceived him to be a gentleman and a man of edu- 
cation, as well as a veteran of the Mexican War, and few 
presumed to be familiar with him. He had a quiet way 
of keeping people at arm's length. Once or twice, by 
prompt and vigorous action, he showed himself capable 
of protecting himself physically. " A fellow came to a 
dance, one night, in his shirt sleeves, and set about being 
noisy and vulgar. Grant asked him what he meant by 
it. He started to make back talk. Grant told him to be 
quiet, and when he refused. Grant kicked him out of the 
door and clear out to the gate. He was a little giant 
physically, and a man of no words — all action. 

" Another time he was going to Big River, in company 
with a man by the name of Bowman, with a load of props 
and one of hoop-poles. They met a string of Big River 
teams, whose drivers crowded Bowman and Grant into 



136 LIFE OF GRANT 

the ditch. Grant grabbed a hoop-pole, and said to 
Bowman : ' Come on ! ' He was captain of that fight, 
and the Big River fellows did n't repeat the trick." 

Grant was the last man in the world to take offense, 
but there were limits to his good nature. He took part 
in all the neighborhood social affairs — at least, to the 
point of accompanying Mrs. Grant and looking on. He 
himself did not dance, but he enjoyed a game of cards, 
and was an excellent player. Occasionally he took Mrs. 
Grant to a quilting. As they had no light carriage, they 
went on horseback, each with a child behind. He often 
made calls on the neighbors, and was sometimes present 
at the shooting-matches in the early fall, when the young 
men met to shoot for the quarters of a bullock. " He 
was a fairly good shot at a mark, and sometimes carried 
off a quarter of beef." 

At that time whisky-drinking was well-nigh universal, 
and Captain Grant was exposed to constant temptation. 
His wife and children helped him in his fight against his 
appetite. His safety lay in absolutely abstaining from its 
use, and for the most part he kept clear of blame. His 
time of greatest trial came when he met old army friends 
in St. Louis. Whatever share he took in the drinking 
habits of the time, he retained the respect of the best 
people of the neighborhood. No reputable man in all 
the country round will say he ever heard an oath or an 
unclean suggestion from Captain Grant's lips. 

His neighbors considered him a strange man. " To 
some of them he seemed unpractical, a dreamer, with no 
turn at all for business, but one of the kindest men in the 
world. Everybody could impose on his generosity." 

His neighbors never became intimate with him, for all 
he was so companionable and unassuming and lived the 
life of a farmer as absolutely as any of them. He cut 
props, hauled wood, plowed, sowed, reaped, raised hogs, 
grubbed out stumps, and built fences. It was a hard life, 
but had, after all, its peculiar pleasures. It had its sunny 
days as well as its cold, gray, hopeless ones. 

His affairs improved little each year. Mrs. Grant was 
obliged to think twice before buying, but neither she nor 



CAPTAIN GRANT TURNS FARMER 137 

the children ever went hungry or cold. Living was cheap, 
wood as abundant as air, corn was easy to raise, and bacon 
not impossible to honestly acquire ; therefore the children 
throve apace. 

At its best life in these days was a hard struggle, and 
the soldierly figure began to stoop at the shoulders, and 
the hands grew hard and heavy. " He was always busy. 
He did his best, and most of his neighbors felt sorry for 
him. Others patronized him because of his lack of suc- 
cess, and would not have swapped places with him. In 
general the best people of the town considered him one 
of themselves." 

In 1857 Mrs. Dent died, and Colonel Dent returned to 
St. Louis to live. Captain Grant took charge of White 
Haven, and assumed control of the slaves, tools, and 
teams, such as they were. He was a poor slave-driver, 
however ; the negroes did pretty much as they pleased. 
He seldom talked politics, but his neighbors all considered 
him a Northern man in feeling and education. They 
suspected an opposition to slavery. Whatever his real 
wish in the matter, lie acquiesced to the extent of making 
use of the negroes left in his charge. 

His teaming to St. Louis and to the barracks, where he 
sold fire-wood, still continued, and " he unloaded many a 
cord of wood in the back yards of St. Louis aristocrats of 
that time." Fellow-officers, meeting him on the street 
during this period, pitied him as " a man with an all- 
pervading air of hard luck and vain regrets," dressed in 
farmer fashion, with his trousers tucked into his old mili- 
tary boots. " He talked very little about himself, even 
to those old friends — merely answered questions; but 
seemed to enjoy references to old times in the Mexican 
War." One of his chief est pleasures was a meeting with 
comrades like Longstreet and Ingalls. 

By reason of his full beard and his gravity of demeanor, 
he seemed a middle-aged man to the young men of Gra- 
vois. He was never sour or sullen, but also he was never 
gay. He wore the somber look of a man who endures 
and waits. 

General Beale was sitting outside of the Planters' Hotel, 



138 LIFE OF GRANT 

one day, and Grant came along with a teamster's whip in M 
his hand. Beale recognized him. " Why, how do you ^ 
do, captain? What are you doing here? " 

" Oh, I am farming on a piece of land belonging to 
Mrs. Grant, some ten miles out in the country." 

While they were talking the bell rang, and Grant started 
to go on; but Beale said : " Come in and have dinner with 
me." 

"Well, I don't know; I am not dressed for company," 
said Grant, hesitatingly. 

" Oh, that does not matter; come in." 

Grant never forgot this kindness. Any favor, no matter 
how small, which arose from a man's frank and unselfish 
generosity made a profound impression upon him, though 
he gave little visible sign of it at the time. 

After all is said in palliation of this period, it was a 
sorrowful situation for Ulysses Grant. He was a Northern 
man of natural refinement, and an educated soldier, mar- 
ried into a slave-owning family, and surrounded by slave- 
owning neighbors upon whom he was, in a sense, depen- 
dent. Each year his position grew more difficult because 
of the growing heat of discussion. He never talked 
politics outside his most intimate circle of friends. What 
he thought is but obscurely hinted at by his action. 

He voted for Buchanan in 1858, and expressed to a 
friend at the time a foreboding of trouble. He hoped to 
see Buchanan elected, for the reason that he believed it 
would put the struggle four years further off. H. C. 
Wright, a near neighbor, was running for the legislature 
on the Whig ticket that year, and was at the polling- 
place. Grant approached him, and said : " Mr. Wright, I 
have voted for you to-day ; not on the ground of politics, 
for I am a Democrat, but because I think you are the best 
man for the place." 

In calling these " years of failure," it must be remem- 
bered that the whole nation was in unstable equilibrium. 
The West had passed through a panic, and the impending 
struggle between North and South made all business un- 
certain and fitful. Then, too. Grant began at the bottom, 
as a farmer on a piece of timbered land. And yet, in 



CAPTAIN GRANT TURNS FARMER 1 39 

spite of all this, he steadily though slowly acquired stock 
and tools; for when, in 1858, he determined to leave the 
farm, he had some little property to sell at public sale. 

It is not strictly true to say he was inapt in business. 
At times he showed remarkable efficiency. His perform- 
ance of regimental quartermaster duties was without 
criticism, and his successful bakery for the regiments at 
Puebla, Monterey, and Tacubaya, and also his ready 
resource developed in crossing the Isthmus, show him to 
have been capable and orderly. It seems that when a 
thing was worth while he did it well. But he saw nothing 
ahead for himself or his children. He could not go on 
thus to the end of his days. All the time he was grub- 
bing out stumps and hauling wood he was pondering. A 
neighbor said: " He was like a man thinking on an ab- 
stract subject all the time." He was not really a part of 
the life around him ; he remained a looker-on througli it 
all, meeting everybody in the same reserved, courteous 
way. There are scores of people to say they knew him, — 
people who saw him on his load of wheat or wood, men 
who met him in his cabin or saw him working about his 
stable, — but they remember little that is instructive, 
beyond his reticence and his generosity. They saw the 
rough clothing, the grave, impassive face, the common 
every-day action of the man, and knew him to be of 
Northern blood ; that was all. 

But in the midst of his own trouble and poverty he 
never forgot others. He was improxidently generous. 
He gave when he needed every cent in his pocket. He 
was kind, quick to aid by physical labor, and hospitable 
to the last loaf. There was not one word uttered against 
him at that time, even in relation to his intemperance. 
Whisky was known by a few to be his bane, but, except 
at rare intervals, he did not indulge himself in its use. 
" No one considered him a drinking man, and there were 
no stories abroad then concerning his immoderate use of 
whisky," said his neighbor Wright. 

It was a time of inner struggle. He fought a silent 
battle with the liquor habit, and won ; and to his faithful 
wife the highest honor is due. The first two years of his 



I40 LIFE OF GRANT 

life in Gravois have their dark spots, but gradually he put 
behind him the habits of army life, and lived without 
reproach. 

In the autumn of 1858 he abandoned the idea of farm- 
ing. There may have been family reasons for his removal 
to St. Louis, but the reason he gave at the time suffices. 
His health had broken down. Working in the forest and 
around the lowlands had fastened fever and ague upon 
him, a common affliction in that day, when decaying 
vegetation abounded, and the lands were much swampier 
than at present. 

This also is certain : the eager, erect, hopeful, and 
ambitious youth of the Mexican War had become a pre- 
maturely bent, care-worn, and somber man of thirty-five. 



CHAPTER XXI 

GRANT TRIES TO MAKE A LIVING IN ST. LOUIS 

AS Grant's health began to fail he determined to get 
J\ into some business in St. Louis, and to that end 
directed his energies. Mrs. Grant was very much in favor 
of this plan, and urged her father to aid in finding some- 
thing for the discouraged farmer to do. Colonel Dent very 
soon secured a partnership for his son-in-law with Mr. 
Harry Boggs, a family connection. Mr. Boggs was con- 
ducting a small real-estate business, and was in need of 
somebody to assist him, and Captain Grant went into the 
firm practically as a clerk, for he had no money to invest. 
For a few months he lived with Mr. and Mrs. Boggs, 
who gave him an unfurnished back room in their house 
and told him to fit it up as he pleased. It contained very 
little during the time he lived there. He had a bed, and 
a bowl and pitcher on a chair, and no stove at all. On 
cold nights he sat beside the Boggs's family fire. On 
Saturdays he went home. He lived in this way all 
winter. 

In the early spring he rented a little home on Lynch 
Street, sold his stock and tools at the farm, and moved his 
family into town. " He had no exalted opinion of himself 
at any time, but in those days he seemed almost in despair. 
He was not fitted for civilian life. His friends thought 
him a man of ability, but in the wrong place. His mind 
was not on business matters. His intentions were good, 
but he had n't the faculty to solicit, nor to keep small 
affairs in order." 

To Mr. and Mrs. Boggs he seemed much depressed. 

141 



142 LIFE OF GRANT 

He seldom smiled, was never heard to laugh aloud. His 
habits were of the best while he was with them. Each 
day he went to his desk ; at night he sat beside the fire 
and smoked his pipe. His friends loved him because he 
was so gentle and considerate, but they could not see 
anything for him to do in the world. He had resigned 
from the army, and had failed at farming, and it was 
soon apparent that he was not fitted to buy and sell real 
estate. What could his best friends think but that he was 
a man without a vocation? He did not blame them for 
thinking poorly of his powers ; he thought poorly of him- 
self. He saw no light ahead at this time, and yet his 
desires were of the humblest character. He had no 
ambition, apparently, other than to educate his children 
and take care of his family. 

He impressed his friends as an abstracted man. He 
said very little unless some large topic arose. If any one 
mentioned Napoleon's battles, or the Mexican War, or the 
question of secession, he became alert, succinct, and fluent 
of speech. He began to talk politics a great deal with 
his intimate friends. His partner, Boggs, never doubted 
Grant's position, and politics had something to do with 
the final dissolution of partnership. 

The firm of McClelland, Hilyer & Moody had the 
parlors of an old French mansion on Pine Street between 
Second and Third. Moody had the back room, and Hilyer 
and McClelland the front, and it was in this office that the 
firm of Boggs & Grant had desk-room. Mr. McClel- 
land expressed a liking for Captain Grant. " He does n't 
seem to be just calculated for business, but an honester, 
more generous man ne\'er lived. I don't believe he knows 
what dishonesty is." 

The new firm announced itself, by card, " prepared to 
buy and sell real estate, collect loans and rents, and also 
to buy and sell negotiable paper." This business de- 
mands a persuasive and tireless talker, and again Ulysses 
Grant found himself at a disadvantage. He could not 
"edge toward a thing." He had no power to banter or 
beguile or persuade. He was of not much advantage, 
and Mr. Boggs at length concluded he was better off 



GRANT TRIES TO MAKE A LIVING IN ST. LOUIS I43 

without him. The partnership was dissolved, and Grant 
went out on the streets again, looking for work. He 
haunted the places where any kindly face could be seen 
or any work seemed remotely obtainable. The office of 
county engineer was to be vacant, and he wrote a letter 
in mid-August to the county court, which had the power 
of appointing this office, asking for the place.* 

He presented warm indorsements from Professor J. J. 
Reynolds and D. M. Frost, and a petition signed by 
nearly two score of very well-known citizens, which seems 
to show the respect and esteem in which he was held, and 
correspondingly discredits the stories of the maHcious. 

He was defeated, for two reasons: because the other 
applicant was better known in his capacity as an engineer, 

* " I beg leave to submit myself as an applicant for county engineer, 
should the office be rendered vacant, and at the same time to submit the 
names of a few citizens who have been kind enough to recommend me for 
the office. I have made no effort to get a large number of names, nor the 
names of persons with whom I am not personally acquainted. 

" I inclose herewith also a statement from Professor Reynolds, who was 
a classmate of mine at West Point, as to qualifications. 

" Should your honorable body see proper to give me the appointment, I 
pledge myself to give the ofhce my entire attention and shall hope to give 
general satisfaction. 

" Very respectfully, 

" Your Ob't. Svt., 

" U. S. Grant." 

Appended to this manly and modest application were several indorsements 
which show his standing at the time. 

" St. Louis, August i, 1859. 
" Captain U. S. Grant was a member of the class at the Military Academy 
at West Point which graduated in 1843. He always maintained a high 
standing, and graduated with great credit, especially in mathematics and 
engineering. From my personal knowledge of his capacity and acquire- 
ments, as well as of his strict integrity and unremitting industry, I consider 
him in an eminent degree qualified for the office of county engineer. 

"J. J. REYNOT.ns, 
" Professor Mechanics and Engineering, 
"Washington University, St. Louis, Missouii." 

Below this, and on the same sheet, appears this note : 

" I was for three years in the corps of cadets at West Point with Captain 
Grant, and afterward served with him for some eight or nine years in the 
army, and can fully indorse the foregoing statement of Professor Reynolds. 

" D. M. Frost." 



144 



LIFE OF GRANT 



and also because Grant was a Democrat, and three of 
the five judges were Republican. The defeat was a bitter 
disappointment to him, for the work promised to be con- 
genial. It would have taken him into the open air, and 
had to do with mathematical problems, in which he was 
proficient, and required no manner of soliciting, which 
was practically impossible for him. 

He next secured a clerkship in the custom-house ; but 
within a month the collector died, and Grant was thrown 
out of employment again. He tried everything, but 
knew not where to set his foot. It seemed as if nothing 
existed in the world for him to do, or that the high powers 
had decreed that he should not thrive in the South. 

Meanwhile he had been a year or more in St. Louis 
without earning anything considerable, and his small store 
of savings was gone. Besides this, the man with whom 
he had traded had given him a bad title in his house and 
lot, and at last he was forced to leave it and take a still 
humbler one, though the Lynch Street house seemed 
humble enough. He was in arrears with his landlord, 
and forced also to borrow money of his friends, and by 
the following spring his affairs were in a deplorable 
condition. 

He thought at one time of going to Colorado with a 
friend. At another time he had a chance to go into the 
hardware business, and wrote his father requesting aid. 
He waited nearly a month before getting any reply, and 
when the letter finally came, its refusal to assist him 
threw a damper on his plans. " His father-in-law contrib- 
uted little or nothing to the support of the family, and 
in his conversation reflected with bitterness and ridicule 
upon his unpromising son-in-law." "The hardship of 
this period of his life can never be adequately told," 

When his discouragements were greatest he went often 
to see his friend Fishback, to talk over old times in Ohio, 
and the many friends they held in common. Political 
discussion was running high in St. Louis at that time, 
and to be seen in the office of the " Democrat " argued 
abolition principles, and made of the visitor a marked man. 
This Captain Grant soon felt. Each month the fire of 



GRANT TRIES TO MAKE A LIVING IN ST. LOUIS I45 

sectional hate burned hotter; each month his position 
grew more difficult ; and at last he ceased to call at the 
office of the " Democrat." His father-in-law was a slave- 
owner, and all of Mrs. Grant's family and friends were 
hotly Southern in sentiment, and St. Louis society in those 
days had little toleration for a " Yankee abolitionist " or 
"black Republican Northerner." There was but one 
thing for Captain Grant to do: that was, to keep his 
thoughts to himself. These years constituted a training 
in reticence and self-control. He had been reticent; he 
now became silent. 

One day in the spring of i860 he met his friend 
Fishback on the street, and stopped him. His appearance 
made a vivid and lasting impression on Fishback's mind. 
He was shabbily dressed, his beard was unshorn, and his 
whole manner denoted profound discouragement. 

" Fishback, I would like to sell or hire one of my wife's 
house-servants. She is an excellent woman, and has been 
in the family for many years; but she is a slave, and I 
can't take her North." 

" So you are going North? " 

"Yes," he replied, with a sigh; " I can't make a suc- 
cess of it here, and I am going to Galena. My father has 
offered me a place in the leather business with my brothers, 
and I have accepted." 

Fishback declined to hire the slave woman, and the two 
men shook hands and parted, Fishback to resume his fight 
against slavery. Grant to go North to earn a scanty living. 
At this moment he touched the lowest depth of dejection 
since his resignation from the army. He had made a 
brave fight, but it had been against too great odds. As 
the heat of discussion waxed it became more difficult to 
maintain friendly relations with his neighbors. 

His father-in-law was a grievance, with his invectives 
against the "Yankees"; and the time came when his 
friends Mr. and Mrs. Boggs shared so deeply in the 
growing sectionalism that they refused to take his hand. 

It was a period of being despised of men and of lesser 
men — a time of uncertainty and futility. He was cut off 
from his own people, and little regarded by his brothers. 



146 LIFE OF GRANT 

He was a disappointment to them, for they knew very 
little of him personally, and had not sufficient insight to 
perceive that his education, and his adventurous and 
dramatic life in Mexico, on the Isthmus, and in California, 
had unfitted him for a stern, patient grapple with bread- 
winning by office-work in a time of business uncertainty 
and social unrest. It seemed as though the future prom- 
ised only hunger and cold for him and his. 

He acknowledged his inabiUty to make a living in St. 
Louis, and went to his father an apparently defeated man. 
Regard for the wishes of his wife had led him to remain 
in the South longer than he otherwise would have done. 
She was Southern ; naturally she did not care to go 
North. Now he told her that he must leave St. Louis, 
and, with a loyal resolution to share his fortunes to the 
end, Mrs. Grant consented. 

These were hard days, too, for Jesse Grant, who had 
long talked of " my Ulysses " and the great deeds he was 
to do. It seemed all a mistake now, in face of this grave, 
shabbily dressed, middle-aged man. Perhaps it was the 
quiet mother who softened the father's heart ; at any rate, 
he " referred" Ulysses to his younger sons, Simpson and 
Orvil, who were in charge of a leather store, a branch of 
his business, in Galena, Illinois. Through them Ulysses 
was to receive fifty dollars per month during the first year, 
and if he was found to be a valuable man at the end of the 
year he was to acquire an interest in the business. 

Putting the best face on the matter does not make six 
hundred dollars per annum for a man with a family of 
six to feed a very long start toward a competency ; but 
Captain Grant gratefully accepted the offer. There had 
never been any vaingloriousness in the youth of the man, 
and now he bowed his head to subordination without 
complaint. His wife and children must be fed. 

Those dark days were days of preparation, of growth. 
In this six-year struggle great powers of thought, of 
reserve, of concentration, were developed. His con- 
spicuous weakness in certain directions made him watch- 
ful and kept him sympathetic. His poverty made him 
understand men. His life with slaves and slaveholders 



GRANT TRIES TO MAKE A LIVING IN ST. LOUIS 1 47 

gave him the key to their motives and to their conception 
of the great slavery question. Thus far his life had been 
led midway between the South and the North. Geo- 
graphically he was fitted to understand both sides of any- 
sectional controversy. The black man he knew by per- 
sonal contact. The slave-owner he had known as neigh- 
bor. The enormous power of the " peculiar institution " 
had been a palpable presence all his life in Georgetown, in 
Louisiana, and in Missouri. Southern Ohio was only a 
little less pro-slavery than Gravois, Missouri. 

He was novv to come in contaci vvi'.h the conscience of 
the North. In the spring of i860 he moved to Galena. 
Illinois. 



CHAPTER XXII 

CAPTAIN GRANT GOES NORTH 

THERE are men yet living who stood, one April day 
in i860, watching the steamer Itasca while she 
nosed her way up the tortuous current of the Galena 
River. As she swung up to the wharf, attention was 
attracted to a passenger on deck wearing a blue cape- 
overcoat. As the boat struck the wharf this man rose 
and gathered a number of chairs together, evidently part 
of his household furniture. 

" Who is that? " asked one man of a friend. 

" That 's Captain Grant, Jesse Grant's eldest son. He 
was in the Mexican War. He 's moving here," was the 
reply. 

No one thereafter gave particular attention to the 
stranger, except some boys, who were attracted by his 
soldier overcoat, the like of which they had never before 
seen. 

Captain Grant took a couple of chairs in each hand, 
and walked ashore with them. His wife, a small, alert 
woman, followed him with her little flock. There were 
four children, three boys and a girl, all plainly but care- 
fully dressed, the hand of the mother showing in all 
things. The carrying of the chairs ashore signified that 
Ulysses Grant had become a resident of Galena. 

The elder Grant had prospered. He had removed from 

Bethel to Covington, Kentucky, where his tannery was 

then located. He had also established in Galena, as a 

branch of his business, a wholesale leather store, one of 

the largest in the Northwest at that time. Originally the 

148 



CAPTAIN GRANT GOES NORTH 149 

firm was " Grant & Collins " ; but Collins had withdrawn, 
and the firm in i860 was "Jesse R. Grant," with his son 
Simpson as nominal manager, and with Orvil Grant (the 
youngest brother) and M. T. Burke as clerks. 

Captain Grant established his family in a small brick 
house which stood high on the bluflf to the north of the 
main street. The rent was low, not merely because the 
house stood on the edge of the town, but because to reach 
it required a climb up several hundred wooden steps. The 
price was one hundred dollars, one sixth of his yearly 
wages. 

Simpson went to live with Ulysses in the new house on 
the hill, and this, no doubt, helped out expenses, 

" Nominally," says Burke, " we all were to get six hun- 
dred dollars per year, but as a matter of fact we were 
all working for a common fund, and we had what we 
needed. We were not really upon salaries, in the ordi- 
nary sense, at all. Captain Grant came into the firm on 
the same terms. There was no bossing by Simpson or 
Orvil. I had as much to do about managing as anybody, 
and no more. There was no feeling against Ulysses 
coming in, and no looking down on him as a failure. We 
all looked up to him as an older man and a soldier. He 
knew much more than we in matters of the world, and 
we recognized it." 

Grant at once turned his hand to everything needful 
to be done. He was nominally bill-clerk and collection 
agent, but in fact he sold stock, bought hides, and made 
out bills for goods, all in the same day. Sometimes, it is 
true, he sold Russian bristles worth twelve dollars per 
pound for ten cents an ounce ; but such mistakes are 
rememberable, while the many times he sold awls or shoe- 
pegs or leather, and did it right, are forgotten. 

In those days exchange was high, and to save eight or 
ten per cent, the firm bought dressed pork on the streets, 
and shipped it to Cincinnati, to be turned into money 
there. Captain Grant often climbed upon farmers' sleighs, 
as they came into town, and bid upon the stiff and stark 
yellow carcasses. Richard Barrett, another buyer at the 
time, found him " a mighty shrewd buyer, too." 



ISO 



LIFE OF GRANT 



One day the clerk of the court sent word that a desk 
needed covering, and Captain Grant took a breadth of 
leather, and went to the court-house, where, with the aid of 
young Will Rowley, he cut and tacked it on. Rowley was 
a man of brains and pluck, which Captain Grant quickly 
apprehended, and the two men became friends at once. 

On all days when an overcoat was necessary this 
stranger wore his blue coat; and Lewis Rowley, Clerk 
Rowley's little son, was much impressed by it. " It made 
him seem about eight feet tall to the boys, and they stood 
in awe of him because he had been a soldier and because 
he wore that wonderful coat. His son Fred was about 
my age, and I was in and out of the house almost every 
day. I used to see Captain Grant come home, climbing 
up the hill, and then in the evenings he used to sit and 
read to Mrs. Grant, or read by himself and smoke a clay 
pipe. He was seldom away." 

There is more to tell about this blue coat. Andrew 
Haines met him, one Sunday morning, on one of the 
stairways which crumple over the ridges and descend the 
bluffs to Main Street. He stopped Haines, and said 

abruptly : 

" I suppose people think it strange that I should wear 
this old army coat, but the fact is, I had this coat, it 's 
made of good material, and so I thought I 'd better wear 
it out." Undoubtedly he clung to it for its associations 
as well as for economical reasons, though such sentiment 
his training would not allow him to acknowledge. 

At the bottom of the steep stairway of several hundred 
steps stood a little Methodist church of brick, and there 
Captain Grant, his wife, and their flock of small children 
were to be seen almost as regularly as the deacons them- 
selves. He was not a church-member, but Mrs. Grant 
was, and he readily accompanied her. In such plain, 
simple fashion he lived during that year. 

The Grants knew few people outside their immediate 
neighbors, the Felts, the Burkes, the Haineses, and his 
brother Orvil's family. The Soulardes, whom Mrs. Grant 
knew in the South, came occasionally to see them; and 
sometimes young Upson the jeweler, and Burke, and 



CAPTAIN GRANT GOES NORTH I5I 

Orvil Grant used to meet at the captain's for an evening 
at euchre ; but " the captain was not much of a hand for 
games." He read a great deal to Mrs. Grant, whose eyes 
were not strong, and his evenings were almost invariably 
spent at home. 

During the eleven months of his stay in Galena he 
lived so quietly, so inconspicuously, that no one outside 
his customers and the little group on the hill met him. 
He had few acquaintances and no intimates. Every day 
he went to the store, came home to dinner at noon, and 
returned to his family at night. He was absolutely 
abstemious, diligent as a clock, and freely turned his hand 
to whatever his brothers required of him, patient of their 
imoatience, in all ways their fellow-worker. His work 
was not unpleasant, being in no way connected with a 
tannery. In fact, there was no tannery in Galena, and 
never had been. The nearest approach to it was a currier 
shop, where green hides were stripped of hair in order to 
be shipped to the tannery in the East. Grant was not a 
tanner, never had been, and had nothing to do with this 
work. It was a repulsive task, and required strong nerves 
and powerful muscles. It was a work which he had 
refused to take up when a boy of seventeen, and no one 
asked it of him in Galena. That he may have weighed 
hides is probable, but mainly his work was clerical, and 
bill-books are extant showing many pages of his hand- 
writing. 

The quiet routine of his life was broken but once, when 
he made a business trip of a week or ten days up among 
the small towns of Wisconsin and over into Iowa. This 
trip was important in that it brought him still closer into 
touch with the mind of the North. He had been sur- 
rounded by officers of Southern extraction for many years, 
and it was a good thing for him to come in contact once 
more with the plain people whom Lincoln knew so well 
and trusted so completely. It was a time of discussion. 
At night, in the hotels and stores, he is said to have 
mingled with the crowds, listening quietly to all that was 
worth hearing, and occasionally uttering an apt sentence 
notable for its succinct good sense. He loved still to 



J 52 LIFE OF GRANT 

discuss Mexico and the Mexican War, and was considered 
a most excellent talker. 

It was close figuring during those days, with stout 
youngsters wearing out clothes and eating at least three 
times each day. Mrs. Grant heroically battled with con- 
ditions. She took care of her own house and the children, 
and found time to put on her prettiest dress and meet 
the captain at the edge of the bluff. All superfluities 
were stripped away. They lived comfortably, but very 
plainly. She wore her black alpaca dress, and he his 
army overcoat, in order that the children might present 
good though plain clothing at the Sunday-school classes. 
Grant felt himself to be on the up grade. He had reached 
a certain security : for the first time since leaving the army 
he felt perfectly sure of a home. Simpson was in poor 
health, however, and more and more of the responsibility 
fell upon the captain. Both brothers had come to respect 
him, even to admit his ability to buy and sell goods. In 
December he wrote to a friend ; 

" In my new employment I have become pretty con- 
versant, and am much pleased with it. I hope to be a 
partner pretty soon. . . . How do you feel on the 
subject of secession in St. Louis? . . . 

" It is hard to realize that a State or States should 
commit so suicidal an act as to secede from the Union, 
though, from all reports, I have no doubt but five of them 
will do it. And then, with the present granny of an 
Executive, some foolish policy will doubtless be pursued 
which will give the seceding States the support and sym- 
pathy of the Southern States that don't go out." 

It will be seen he had acquired ideas about political 
events which he could express as clearly and forcibly as 
he reported Mexican campaigns. Indeed, he is remem- 
bered in Galena as a specially good talker ; but he gener- 
ally spoke of what he had seen rather than of things he 
had read, except in the case of newspaper- reading. He 
did not discuss books or religion or art. 

Some time in February his friend Rowley said to him : 

'* There *s a great deal of bluster about these South- 
erners, but I don't think there 's much fight in them." 



CAPTAIN GRANT GOES NORTH 153 

" Rowley, you are mistaken," Grant replied impres- 
sively. " There is a good deal of bluster ; that 's the 
result of their education ; but if they ever get at it, they 
will make a strong fight. You are a good deal like them 
in one respect : each side underestimates the other and 
overestimates itself." * 

He never argued or persuaded. He stated his view 
clearly, forcibly, without exaggeration, then quit, There 
was something inevitable about his manner of speech. 
Men observed it, but seeing his seedy coat, his rough hat, 
and knowing his subordinate position, they passed over 
his remarkable qualities without comprehending their full 
purport, yet feeling vaguely that a man who did not drink, 
did not swear, who argued not concerning God nor science 
nor politics, who used no slang or vulgarity, and who 
spoke only when he had something to say, was (to speak 
within the power of retreat) a "peculiar man." There 
are those who remember to have said, " That Captain 
Grant 's a peculiar chap." Others thought him a " pretty 
smart man in some things, but no push in business." In 
general he was overlooked by those who were the local 
rulers. 

• Richardson's «« Life of Grant." 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE FIRST WAR MEETINGS IN GALENA 

FIVE days after the attack on Fort Sumter there was 
gathered into the court-house of Galena an excited 
throng of men and boys. Every bench was packed, every 
chair taken, every foot of floor was occupied. 

Some one rapped the meeting into order. It was citizen 
Hempstead. He gave way to Robert Brand, the mayor, 
who took the chair with obvious misgivings. He mentally 
stammered, coughed, and repeated himself. He was a 
vacillating, temporizing man of Southern birth before a 
decided and radical audience. Amid painful silences he 
said, with candor:* 

" Fellow-citizens, I acknowledge the honor you confer 
upon me, but it will be well to state briefly and frankly the 
ground on which I stand in this present crisis. I am in 
favor of any honorable compromise." 

That slimy word, slipping from the mouth of the mayor, 
produced a painful shock. The men before him were not 
assembled to suggest compromise. The mayor went on 
haltingly, perceiving that his words were out of harmony : 

" I am in favor of sustaining the President " (the heavy 
feet began to rumble on the floor) " so long as his eflforts 
are for the peace and harmony of the whole country." 

The throng of battle-decided men had small sympathy 
for such indecision ; they grew tumultuous in opposition. 

" I am in favor of a convention of the people, that an 

* This account is based on the accounts which appeared in the daily 
papers of the city. 

154 



THE FIRST WAR MEETINGS IN GALENA 1 55 

adjustment may be made sustaining alike the honor, 
interest, and safety of both sections of our country." 

The grumble of voices warned the mayor that he was 
on the wrong track. He pulled himself together. 

" I am in favor of sustaining our fiag, our Constitution, 
and our laws, right or wrong." 

Nobody felt sure as to just what that meant, but it 
grew clearer as he ended : 

" Yet I am opposed to warring on any portion of our 
beloved country, if a compromise can be effected." 

Then the tumult broke forth. Men quivering with 
excitement leaped to their feet, but gave way to the local 
great man, Elihu B. Washburne, a thin-lipped, trans- 
planted New-Englander. His big, rugged, smooth-shaven 
face was tense with emotion. 

" I do not approve of the spirit of the remarks of our 
chairman, and I never will submit to the idea that in this 
crisis, when war is upon us, and when our flag is assailed 
by traitors and by conspirators, the government should be 
thus dealt with. We should have a chairman who more 
fully represents the patriotic feeling of this meeting; I 
therefore nominate George W. Campbell to preside over 
this meeting." 

This precipitated the struggle, and Washburne's motion 
was put, and defeated in belligerent tumult. 

Mr. Washburne then said : 

" I withdraw the motion. I did not come here with 
the intention or desire to introduce any political questions 
whatsoever. I think, however, the chairman has gone 
out of his way to drag in such matters. In this crisis any 
man who would introduce party politics, be he Republi- 
can, Democrat, or American, such a man is a traitor." 
Applause at this point instructed the chairman. " But to 
test the sense of the meeting, I will offer some resolu- 
tions." He then read a series of resolutions declaring 
the will of the citizens to " support the government of 
the United States in the performance of all its consti- 
tutional duties in the great crisis," and recommending the 
immediate formation of two military companies in the city 
of Galena. 



156 LIFE OF GRANT 

Mr. Washburne, being loudly called for, again addressed 
the meeting, hastily reviewing the situation of affairs in 
the country, and calling upon all good citizens to rally to 
the support of the government. 

The resolutions seemed to express the sentiment of 
the majority of the men present, but talk was demanded. 
Captain Howard, a Mexican War veteran, made a short 
speech. Then arose a young Democratic lawyer of the 
town, a swarthy fellow with rough-hewn, passionate face, 
with big eyes and wide lips — the face of an orator, the 
form of a farm-laborer. 

Many knew him, for he had been a laborer, a farmer, 
and a charcoal-burner in the country near. He had edu- 
cated himself, had been admitted to the bar, and had 
achieved the distinction of being candidate for elector 
on the Democratic list. He could swear in polysyllabic 
words and in iambic pentameter verse. In times of need 
his flow of oaths was satisfying to the most avid ear. 
Every head now leaned to listen, and for nearly an hour, 
with voice like a lion, and with big work-widened hands 
reaching and threatening, John Rawlins pleaded and 
damned and argued, amid wild shouts of applause and 
the rumble of boot-heels, which seemed at times to pre- 
dict the sullen, rhythmic sound of marching feet. 

"The time of compromise is past," he said in closing, 
amid the wildest cheering, '* and we must appeal to the 
God of battles." 

As he sat down it seemed as if every man there was 
ready to enlist, and yet the chairman made no use of this 
splendid appeal, this quick response. The meeting fizzled 
to a dreary anticlimax of second-rate talk. 

As the crowd was pouring out young Rowley said to Grant : 

"Well, Captain Grant, it was a fine meeting, after all." 

"Yes; we 're about to do something now," was the 
quiet answer. 

This was the feeling of the patriots, and next day notice 
was given that a meeting to raise a company of volunteers 
would be held, and a few nights following the court-room 
held another dense crowd. It was a meeting held for 
action this time, and some citizen again assumed temporary 



THE FIRST WAR MEETINGS IN GALENA 1 57 

chairmanship. " This meeting will come to order. I 
nominate Captain U. S. Grant for chairman." 

The men were surprised, but in a mood to go ahead 
under any leadership. The motion was carried. Grant 
was sitting in grave silence on one of the hard benches 
outside the railings. Though he had been in Galena for 
a year, few had ever seen him with his hat off ; and many 
of those who knew him had noticed him simply because 
he wore the only soldier overcoat in the town. He hesi- 
tated. Shouts arose: "Grant! Captain Grant! " 

He left the pine bench upon which he had been sitting, 
and with much embarrassment went through the crowd 
toward the desk. He was perceived to be a shortish man, 
slightly stooping in the neck. He carried his head a little 
on one side also, and had the look of a serious, capable, 
sympathetic country doctor. 

As he approached the platform where stood the judge's 
chair, he turned aside and stood at the clerk's table below 
the judge's desk. 

*' Go up, captain!" "Platform! Platform !" shouted 
the crowd. 

He smiled and shook his head, and stood for a moment 
with both hands resting on the desk. He was not without 
a certain impressiveness, seen thus. His head was large, 
and his face thoughtful and resolute. He wore a full 
beard, light-brown in color, trimmed rather closely, and 
the firm line of his lips could be seen. In manner he was 
almost timid as he turned and said, in substance: 

" Fellow-citizens, this meeting is called to organize a 
company of volunteers to serve the State of Illinois. Who 
will you have for secretary?" 

The bustle of electing a secretary seemed to give Cap- 
tain Grant time to recover himself a little, and he continued : 

" Before calling upon you to become volunteers, I wish 
to state just what will be required of you. First of all, 
unquestioning obedience to your superior officers. The 
army is not a picnicking party, nor is it an excursion. You 
will have hard fare. You may be obliged to sleep on the 
ground after long marches in the rain and snow. Many 
of the orders of your superiors will seem to you unjust, 



158 LIFE OF GRANT 

and yet they must be borne. If an injustice is really done 
you, however, there are courts martial, where your wrongs 
can be investigated and offenders punished. If you put 
your name down here, it should be in full understanding 
of what the act means. In conclusion, let me say that so 
far as I can I will aid the company, and I intend to reenlist 
in the service myself." 

The audience cheered at this, though a little dashed 
by the quiet, serious, almost fateful talk of the chairman. 
Someway he took the bombast out of the evening's 
meeting, yet left it vital with resolute patriotism. In 
answer to questions concerning military organization, he 
replied in masterly brevity. He seemed to know every 
detail. Every word fitted to its place like hewn stones in 
an arch, not one unnecessary. 

Washburne made a strong speech, and then the crowd 
called again for Rawlins. 

Rawlins refused to speak, and when some of his friends 
went over and took him by the arm to lead him forward, 
he said : 

" No, boys ; I can't do it. My wife is dying of con- 
sumption. If she were the rosy-cheeked girl she was 
when I married her, I would n't say, ' Go, boys ' ; I 'd 
say, * Come, boys.'' But I can't leave her." 

The fateful eyes of the chairman were on his neighbor 
Rawlins, and the sincerity of the young husband's utter- 
ance sank deep. 

Nearly two score names were enrolled that night, and 
Ulysses Grant never again returned to his clerkship in 
the leather store of J. R. Grant; he had other business 
on hand which he knew more about. 

The next day he wrote to his father-in-law, putting into 
writing more of his actual fervency of feeling than he ever 
allowed himself in speech. It showed how deeply he had 
pondered on vital themes, and how clear-sighted his per- 
ceptions were. 

Mr. F. Dent. 

Dear Sir: I have but litde time to write. . . . The times 
are indeed startling ; but now is the time, particulariy in the 
border Slave States, to show their love of country. ... All 
party distinction should be lost sight of, and every true patriot 



THE FIRST WAR MEETINGS IN GALENA 1 59 

be for maintaining the glorious old stars and stripes, the consti- 
tution and the Union. The North is responding to the presi- 
dent's call in such a manner that the confederates may truly 
quake. I tell you there is no mistaking the feelings of the people. 
The government can call into the field 75,000 troops and ten and 
twenty times 75,000 if it should be necessary, and find the means 
of maintaining them too. It is all a mistake about the northern 
pocket being so sensitive. In times like the present no people 
are more ready to give of their time or of their abundant means. 

No impartial man can conceal from himself the fact, that in 
all these troubles the southerners have been the aggressors, and 
the administration has stood purely on the defensive, more on the 
defensive than she would have dared to have done, but for her 
consciousness of right and the certainty of right prevailing in the 
end. 

The news to-day is that Virginia has gone out of the Union. 
But for the influence she will have on the border States, this is 
not much to be regretted. Her position or rather that of eastern 
Virginia has been more reprehensible from the beginning than 
that of South Carolina. She should be made to bear a heavy 
portion of the burden of the war for her guilt. 

In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery* 

This letter and one to his father and to his brother-in- 
law put an end to any stories concerning his lack of 
patriotism. He was awake and eager. 

On Saturday of the same week he went with Rowley 
and Rawlins and Orvil Grant into Hanover, a neighboring 
village, and there he made his first set speech; "and it 
was a good one, too — short and to the point." 

Meanwhile the company of Jo Daviess Guards had 
been organized, and the men, recalling Captain Grant's 
record and his knowledge of military affairs, offered him 
the captaincy of it. He thanked them, but refused. " I 
think I can serve the State better at Springfield," he said 
frankly. 

He explained to his friends : " I can't afford to reenter 
service as a captain of volunteers. I have served nine 
years in the regular army, and I am fitted to command a 
regiment." He further said: "I will do anything that 
lies in my power to assist the company in getting into 
service. I will go down to Springfield, if necessary." 

* Quoted liy Burr in his " Life nnd Deeds of Gr.aiit." 



l60 LIFE OF GRANT 

Upon his withdrawal, A. L. Chetlain was made captain. 
He was a vigorous young man, and had been the first 
man to volunteer. 

Captain Grant was in hourly demand thereafter. He 
selected the cloth and superintended the making of the 
uniforms ; he drilled the company as a whole and in 
squads ; he instructed the officers, Captain Chetlain and 
Lieutenants Campbell and Dixon ; and in one week from 
the date of the second war meeting the company was 
organized, uniformed, and ready to move upon the enemy. 
In true provincial blare and bluster, it marched through 
the streets, preceded by the fire company, the Masonic 
Assembly, the Odd Fellows, the mayor, and other civic 
means of splendor, while Captain Grant, with carpet-bag 
in hand, stood modestly in the crowd on the walk and 
watched them pass. To avoid the crowd, he fell in behind 
the column, and quietly, with head pensively drooping, 
marched in their wake across the bridge, and entered the 
train for Springfield. No one remembers his walk to the 
depot, save one or two small boys who were in the rear of 
the rush. One was Henry Chetlain, brother to the cap- 
tain of the Jo Daviess Guards. He recalls that the carpet- 
bag was limp and gaunt. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS 

DURING the month of May, 1861, Springfield, the 
capital city of Illinois, seethed like a pot with orators 
and soldiers and place-seekers and glory-hunters. Lin- 
coln's call for troops had been made, the volunteers were 
pouring in, the legislature was in extraordinary session, 
and nearly every public man in the State was at the seat 
of government to advise, instruct, or wheedle the gov- 
ernor and his staff. Nobody knew what to do or how to 
do it. The streets were filled with the tramp of squadrons, 
the snarl of the drum, and the wail of the fife. The whole 
State seemed marching. 

Governor Richard Yates, a man of keen intelligence 
and good intentions, but of little military knowledge, was 
at his wit's end. What with political advisers, regiments 
appealing to be recognized, and the work of organizing 
and arming such as had already been accepted (keep- 
ing all the while on the safe side of persons supposed to 
hold the — th district in the hollow of their hands), he 
was as busy as any man in the North at that time. The 
great State of IlUnois had but just ceased to be a border 
State, and had but very loose military organizations; it 
scarcely reached organization at all. 

The governor's office was thronged twenty rows deep 
with people of importance (or fancied importance), and 
he had little time to give to the modest and unimpressive 
ex-soldier from Galena who came to tell him that the Jo 
Daviess Guards were ready to be mustered in, and also 
to say that he desired to aid the government in some 



1 62 LIFE OF GRANT 

capacity. The governor curtly said: " I 'm sorry to say, 
captain, there is nothing for you to do. Call again." 

Captain Grant turned away much chagrined. He had 
reached this interview after hours of waiting, and by aid 
of a letter from his local political leader, Mr. E. B. Wash- 
burne, and now saw his friend's letter go into the waste- 
basket, and heard the polite phrase, which meant nothing, 
" Call again." 

However, the " Daily Register " uttered an unconscious 
word for him, for the next day after his arrival, under the 
caption, " Still They Come," the editor spoke in praise of 
the uniformed, well-drilled company from Galena, " one 
of the few ready to enter immediately on active service." 
The drilling and uniforming were the outcome of Grant's 
experience and activity, but of this the editor was un- 
aware. 

Grant had left Galena with a very slender purse as well 
as a very lank carpet-bag, and was in poor condition for 
a long waiting at the door of office. He knew no one 
save Captain Chetlain and a few of the private soldiers in 
the Jo Daviess Guards, and, worst of all, in the midst of 
the martial preparation he had no part. He saw their 
great need of him, but was absolutely powerless to put in 
a guiding hand. 

In order to keep expenses as low as possible, he shared 
the rent of a room with Captain Chetlain, and took his 
meals at the Chenery House, near by. 

He began to make acquaintances slowly. R. H. 
McClellan, newly elected member from Galena, came to 
him and talked with him, and became convinced of his 
value as a military leader in a small way. He had reached 
no acquaintance with Grant in Galena, but his connection 
with the Guards led to closer study, though he saw little 
of him. Captain Chetlain, however, still continued to 
profit by Captain Grant's instruction. Each night, as the 
two men returned to their room, some point of military 
organization was taken up and discussed ; and Captain 
Chetlain spread the knowledge thus gained among his 
company officers. 

At meal-time each day Grant met McClellan, J. E. 




«fV/ 



/^ 



'^2-<i^4-cij>-, 



gM^ 






/^^^ ^^ ^/-<^/ 









^<5^- 







Grant's letter offering his services to the government. 
\n the original letter the last three lines and the signature are on a second page. 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS 163 

Smith, and other of his Galena neighbors, and was en- 
couraged by them to remain a little longer. They knew 
the need of his services. All the talk was about the weak- 
ness of the State's military organization. The governor 
was overwhelmed with volunteers, but had no one to 
muster them in or make use of them effectively. Grant 
impressed every one he talked with as a man who knew 
military forms and regulations, but he had not secured the 
attention of any of the influential politicians of his county. 

He came into Mr. McClellan's room, one night, saying 
abruptly : "I'm going home. The politicians have got 
everything here ; there 's no chance for me. I came 
down because I felt it my duty. The government edu- 
cated me, and I felt I ought to offer my services again. 
I have applied, to no result. I can't afford to stay here 
longer, and I 'm going home." 

He determined to leave on the evening train. Gov- 
ernor Yates took his meals at the same hotel, and had 
come to observe Captain Grant and to inquire about him 
a little more particularly. The evening Grant determined 
to quit the capital he left the supper-room before the 
governor rose, and was standing on the steps when he 
came out. " Captain Grant, I understand you are about 
leaving the city," said the governor. 

" That is my intention," replied Grant. 

" I wish you 'd remain overnight, and call at my office 
in the morning." 

Grant remained, called on the governor, and was 
assigned to a desk in the adjutant-general's department. 
The office of adjutant-general of the State of Illinois at 
that time was about equivalent to a janitorship of the 
little arsenal, which was hardly more imposing than a 
corn-crib. Its incumbent was expected to sweep out the 
arsenal twice a year, and for this he drew a salary of five 
hundred dollars. The office was given to some political 
auxiliary to whom the honor of being called general made 
up for the lack of salary. The adjutant-general at that 
time was Mr. T. S. Mather, who is frankly described by 
old citizens as being " no good on earth as adjutant-gen- 
eral. He was an insurance agent, a big, showy, good- 



l64 LIFE OF GRANT 

natured fellow, and up to the breaking out of the war he 
had no special office for transacting the State's business." 

The pressure of military responsibility which now fell 
upon Tom Mather was very great, and Governor Yates, 
though a college-bred man and of a bright mind, was quite 
as unmilitary. They needed Captain Grant's experience 
desperately, and yet they had not sense or courage enough 
to use him. Mather grudgingly set Grant to the most 
elementary of tasks. For several days he made out blanks, 
sitting at a three-legged table in the bare anteroom of the 
improvised adjutant's office. " Any boy could do my 
work," he said, in disgust, to Captain Chetlain. But the 
position was not barren of results. It enabled him to 
meet men and to answer questions, and it soon became 
noised abroad that he was a West Point graduate and a 
veteran of the Mexican War. Above all, it became known 
that any one could ask any military question of Captain 
Grant, and receive a clear, concise, and definite answer. 

John M. Palmer, passing through the office one day, 
asked who he was, and was told, " He 's a dead-beat 
military man — a discharged officer of the regular army." 
Nevertheless the knowledge spread that the " dead-beat 
military man " knew things important to know. And yet, 
while the whole State was resounding with the clamor of 
drum and fife, while the confusion deepened, while the 
need of his skill increased, they kept him idle or set him 
at small clerical tasks. He ruled blanks, he wrote out 
military forms and orders, and decided questions of mili- 
tary regulations; he dug up old muskets in the arsenal, 
and made report thereon to the governor — doing uncom- 
plainingly tasks almost menial in character, and yet making 
steady progress. 

He became general military adviser of the whole office, 
but so quietly that no one realized it. Then he was made 
drill-master at Camps Yates and Butler, the one on the 
western outskirts of the town, the other on the east. Dur- 
ing the temporary absence of General Pope he was made 
commander of Fort Yates. Reports of his efficiency there 
encouraged Governor Yates to appoint him " mustering 
officer and aide," at a salary of three dollars per day, and 
the complimentary rank of colonel. 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS 16$ 

This step evidently aroused some criticism, for a slur- 
ring article appeared in the Jacksonville "Journal," com- 
plaining of Governor Yates for appointing aides with rank 
as colonel; especially did the writer cry out against the 
pay, which was absurdly high! Nevertheless the gov- 
ernor sent Grant into the field to muster in certain 
regiments, and in the adjutant-general's ofifice are some 
of his reports, signed, " U. S. Grant, mustering officer"; 
and some of the commanders of the regiments mustered in 
by him in their reports speak of him as " Colonel Grant." 
On the 14th of May he went to Mattoon to muster in the 
regiment of the Seventh Congressional District. 

The history of this regiment is of great interest. It 
was made up of lusty young men from the farms, shops, 
and offices of the district, and at the time Grant went out 
to muster it in it was commanded by " Colonel " Simon 
S. Goode. He had led a company from Decatur into the 
encampment, and as he strode across the green he had 
so v/on the hearts of all the officers and men that his elec- 
tion had been almost unanimous. He seemed the ideal 
soldier, tall, straight, and resolute of glance. He wore a 
gray flannel shirt, a broad hat, and tall boots. At his 
belt-clasp was a huge bowie-knife, and on either side were 
three pepper-box revolvers. He looked to be quite ca- 
pable of putting down the Rebellion alone. As a matter 
of fact he knew as little of military affairs as his corporals. 

Grant spent two days with the regiment ; and notwith- 
standing the personal splendor of Colonel Goode, and the 
glamour of his record as a Nicaraguan filibuster, the 
quiet mustering officer made so deep an impression upon 
the officers that they named their rendezvous Camp Grant. 
This arose partly from the influence of Lieutenant-Colonel 
Alexander and First Lieutenant Joseph W. Vance. Alex- 
ander had been in the Mexican War, and young Vance 
had been two years at West Point. 

Colonel Grant was an object of admiration to the young 
cadet. This was due in part to the fact that Grant was 
the first officer young Vance had seen clothed with 
authority from the State; and then Grant was a West- 
Pointer and a veteran, and knew his duties. Everything 
he did was done without hesitation. He was a vivid 



l66 LIFE OF GRANT 

contrast to Goode. He was a little bit stooped at that 
time, and wore a cheap suit of clothes; but the more dis- 
cerning were not blinded by his modest appearance. On 
the night of his return to Springfield Lieutenant Vance 
went to the hotel to see him. He found him sitting alone, 
smoking abstractedly. 

Vance introduced himself, and they had a long talk ; 
at least, Vance talked, and Grant listened, with a peculiar 
sidewise glance. It was a rainy night, and a long time 
before train-time, and the young cadet felt sure that 
Colonel Grant was glad to have his company. The boy 
had not talked long before he began to disclose the real 
character of Goode: that he was a drunkard and a crank; 
that he was accustomed to go about at night with a long 
cloak wrapped around him, personating the great generals 
of the past ; that he was constantly quoting Napoleon, and 
often said, " I never sleep " ; that he made flamboyant 
speeches to the men, and did all kinds of unmilitary things. 

While going on to say that the men were beginning to 
understand Goode's worthlessness, the boy became aware 
that he was talking out of school to a superior officer; and 
not only that, but there was something in this man's silence 
and in his strange glance which made the cold sweat break 
out all over the other. He saw that he had committed 
a gross breach of military discipline. However, Colonel 
Grant said nothing in reproof, and Lieutenant Vance 
retired rather abruptly. " A few days later he was made 
drill-master of the regiment, upon Colonel Grant's recom- 
mendation." 

Grant now went to one or two other points to muster 
in regiments, and on the 20th of May, or thereabouts, 
returned to Springfield, and drew a voucher for his pay, 
amounting to one hundred and thirty dollars.* He did 

* The voucher reads : 

" Springfield, Illinois, May 22. 
" This is to certify that Captain U. S. Grant, as aide to the governor and 
mustering officer, is entitled to the sum of one hundred and thirty dollars. 

" T. S. Mather, 
" Adjutant-General Illinois Militia. 

"' Approved by Governor Yates, 
" May 24, 186/ " 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS 167 

not get the money till long after, though his need was 
great. 

This ended his work for the State. Charles Lamphier, 
editor of the " Register," came upon him at the door of 
the Chenery House, a few days later, looking fagged out, 
lonesome, poor, and dejected. 

" What are you doing here, captain?" 

" Nothing— waiting," was his spiritless reply. 

Captain John Pope was stationed at Springfield during 
this time as mustering officer for the United States. He 
was a fine-looking man, and entirely overshadowed the 
plain little man who was serving the governor. He pa- 
tronized Grant a httle. Through him, no doubt. Governor 
Yates and others were made aware of the conditions under 
which Grant had resigned from the army. There is no 
evidence of ill will in this, but when asked concerning 
Grant, Captain Pope could only state what he knew to be 
current gossip in army circles. Thus almost every public 
man in the capital became possessed of Captain Grant's 
saddest history. This militated sharply against him, 
though he was the most abstemious of men during all 
this period. 

Shortly after this he returned to Galena. His visit is 
chronicled by the daily paper, and he achieved the first 
editorial notice of his life on the following day. Mr. 
Houghton, the editor, made a call upon him, and after a 
loner interview returned to his office, and wrote a notable 
paragraph concerning him. 

" We are now in want of just such soldiers as he is, 
and we hope the government will invite him to higher 
command. He is the very soul of honor, and no man 
breathes who has a more patriotic heart. We want among 
our young soldiers the influence of the rare leadership of 
men like Captain Grant." 

Nevertheless, when Captain Grant wrote to the adjutant- 
general at Washington, proffering his services, his letter 
remained unanswered, and upon his return to Springfield 
he found himself no longer able even to serve as aide to 
the governor. He had been used when necessity com- 
pelled ; but the regiments were all mustered in, the clerks 



1 68 LIFE OF GRANT 

were beginning to get the run of military usages, and 
nothing remained for Mustering Ofificer Grant except en- 
hstment as a private soldier, or command of a regiment. 

Yates did not think of giving him command. " Grant 
was a carpet-bagger, scarcely a citizen of the State." He 
had no political influence, and stood no chance with the 
orators and wire-pullers who crowded for position. He 
was considered a " military dead-beat" by the politicians, 
and a sort of " decayed soldier " by the citizens. He was 
poorly dressed, decidedly unimposing in appearance, and 
army gossip put a blot against his name on the rolls of 
the old Fourth Infantry. Seeing nothing ahead in Illinois, 
he went to St. Louis to see General Fremont, but failed 
to do so; and on his way back stopped at Casey ville, 
where Colonel Chetlain was camped with his regiment. 
He again assisted Chetlain in mihtary forms and regula- 
tions, and spent the night with him. 

" It is strange," he said to Chetlain, in a sad and musing 
tone, '* that a man of my experience and education cannot 
secure a command." 

Under these conditions he saw the futility of staying 
longer in Illinois, and decided to go to Ohio, to Cincin- 
nati, where George B. McClellan was already in command 
of a military district. He had a faint hope that McClellan, 
when he saw him, would offer him a position on his staff. 
He called on two successive days at his office, but failed 
to see him on either occasion. McClellan, like Fremont, 
did not care to be bothered by the " decayed soldier." 

He was now fairly at the end of his resources. During 
this period of discouragement he visited his old comrade 
Carr B. White, in Georgetown, Ohio. To White he nar- 
rated his many attempts to get back into the service, but 
received very little aid. White suggested going to 
Columbus. The village of Georgetown was not an over- 
enthusiastic Union town, and Captain Grant's visit was 
not a very pleasant one. 

Going back to Cincinnati, he met Chilton White, who 
was a member of the legislature. To him he told his 
story, and ended by saying: " I 've tried to reenter service 
in vain. I must live, and my family must hve. Perhaps 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS I69 

I could serve the army by providing good bread for them. 
You remember my success at bread-baking in Mexico?" 

White replied that there ought to be a command for 
him, and asked him to stay in Cincinnati. " I 'm going 
to Columbus, and I '11 see what can be done." In a few 
days he returned with a commission for Grant as colonel 
of the Twelfth Ohio, but found Grant much elated over 
a telegram which he Iiad that day received. It was from 
Governor Yates. " Will you accept the command of the 
Seventh District Regiment?" 

He had already telegraphed acceptance, and thanking 
White for his kindness, he returned to Springfield with a 
jubilant soul, but poor as ever; and Ohio lost the chance 
of sending Captain Grant back into service. 

Meanwhile dramatic events were swiftly succeeding one 
another in the regiment commanded by Colonel Goode. 
A bread riot broke out at Mattoon early in June, and a 
little later the guard-house, becoming intolerably infested 
with vermin, was burned by the men. Goode was either 
powerless to prevent disturbance, or careless of it. Reck- 
less spirits foraged upon the neighboring farms, stealing 
pigs and chickens, while others howled drunkenly through 
the streets of the town. " There was n't a chicken within 
four miles of us," said an old sergeant. There was much 
complaint of the rowdyism of a number of the soldiers, 
and at last the governor ordered the regiment to Spring- 
field. On the 15th of June, in a letter to the adjutant- 
general, Goode reported the regiment in Camp Yates. 
However, the change did not quell the disturbance. 

The men of the regiment had sized Goode up, and 
there was a great deal of talk about his inefficiency. 
Several of the officers determined never to enter service 
with Goode in command, and, with the self-confidence of 
youth. Lieutenant Vance determined to let the governor 
know how they felt about the matter. He knew Mr. 
Hatch, the Secretary of State, and, accompanied by Lieu- 
tenant Armstrong, went to call upon him. They stated 
the situation, and asked Hatch to bring the matter to the 
governor's attention, requesting him either to appoint a 
new colonel or let the officers elect one. 



I70 LIFE OF GRANT 

Hatch said : " You had better talk with Colonel Palmer 
about it. His advice will be better than mine." 

Colonel Palmer advised them to see the governor, and 
at once took them in and introduced them. 

" Governor, these young gentlemen want to talk with 
you about the condition of the Seventh District Regiment." 

The young men then stated the case. The governor 
listened in silence. At the end he simply remarked : " The 
matter will be inquired into." 

Shortly after this the governor invited all the commis- 
sioned officers of the regiment to come to his office to 
confer upon the condition of the regiment. He said he 
had heard that a new colonel was asked for, and he wished 
to get at the wishes of each man. He thought, however, 
that, in place of beginning with the highest officer in rank, 
he would reverse the order and begin with the lowest. 
This was a delicate way of recognizing that Lieutenant- 
Colonel Alexander was a possible candidate for the posi- 
tion. The result of the poll was a strong expression 
of opinion in favor of Grant. The governor listened 
thoughtfully. 

Some ten or twelve citizens (political selections) had 
already been appointed colonels, and criticisms were not 
wanting. More than this, it began to look a great deal like 
war. The matter of leading a regiment of soldiers south 
looked less like a summer excursion, and candidates were 
not quite so numerous ; and, last of all, the regiment of 
the Seventh District, under the singular command of 
Simon Goode, had won a hard reputation throughout the 
State, and political colonels eyed its disordered ranks 
with a certain apprehension. As a matter of fact, the 
governor had offered the colonelcy to several men, only 
to have it refused. At the end of the statement of the 
officers, he turned to old Jesse Dubois, the rugged Auditor 
of State, from whose district the regiment came, and said : 
" Dubois, here are the officers of your regiment asking for 
Captain Grant. Shall I appoint him?" 

And Dubois, who had seen something of Grant, replied : 
" I 've no objection." 

"Very well; telegraph Colonel Grqnt to come on." 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS I7I 

The "Daily Register" of the following day contains 
the first mention of Grant's name: " Captain Grant of Jo 
Daviess County, formerly of the regular army, has been 
appointed by Governor Yates colonel of the Seventh Dis- 
trict Regiment, now in camp in Camp Yates, in place of 
Colonel Goode." 

Officers and men alike looked forward eagerly to the 
arrival of Colonel U. S. Grant. There was some cere- 
mony attending his introduction to his new command. 
John A. McClernand and John A. Logan, members of 
Congress, were in the city, and were both invited to speak 
to the troops. Colonel Grant had never met either of 
these gentlemen, though he knew of them as prominent 
poHticians. McClernand he believed to be a fervid Union 
man, but of Logan he was a httle doubtful. It was Logan 
who accompanied Colonel Grant to the camp, and on the 
way out said : 

" Colonel, the regiment is a little unruly. Do you 
think you can manage them?" 

" I think I can," was the quiet reply. 

In the amphitheater of the State fair-grounds, which 
formed Camp Yates, they found the troops assembled like 
an audience, ready to enjoy and applaud the speeches of the 
famous orators, and incidentally to greet their new colonel. 

McClernand spoke first. After a vigorous and florid 
speech teeming with historical allusion, he concluded: 
" Having said this much, allow me, lUinoisans, to present 
to you my friend and colleague in Congress, the Hon. 
John A. Logan. He is gifted with eloquence, and will 
rouse you to feel as the Athenians felt under the elo- 
quence of Demosthenes. They asked to be immediately 
led against Philip." 

Mr. Logan was greeted with cheers, and in the course 
of his address spoke of the vile partizan assaults which 
had been made on him, and urged that it was the private 
duty of every man to rally to the flag; and the loyalty of 
his audience rolled back in thunderous applause. He 
urged the regiment, when the time came to exchange 
their short-time State service for enlistment in the na- 
tional army, to move as one man. 



172 LIFE OF GRANT 

" You can't fall out now," he said with a sudden change 
of tone. " If you go home now to Mary, she will say, 
' Why, Tom, are you home from the war so soon ? ' ' Yes,' 
' How far did you get? ' ' Mattoon.' " 

The sarcasm in his slurring utterance of the word " Mat- 
toon " was answered by hearty laughter — laughter which 
turned many a holiday militiaman into a resolute soldier. 
With a final appeal to their patriotism and valor, he intro- 
duced and led forward the imperturbed colonel, who had 
remained in changeless attitude for nearly two hours at 
the back of the platform. 

" Allow me to present to you your new commander. 
Colonel U. S. Grant." 

Many of the soldiers observed him for the first time. 
They were astonished and disappointed. Logan towered 
majestically erect, powerful, handsome, with coal-black 
hair and flashing eyes ; by his side Grant, in plain citizen's 
clothes, seemed poor and weak. He looked like a grave 
and thoughtful country doctor, who had been weather- 
beaten in storms and saddened by scenes of human suffer- 
ing, and was entirely lacking in martial bearing. How- 
ever, some enthusiast raised a cheer, and there were loud 
calls for a speech. 

"Grant! Grant 1 " 

"Grant! A speech." 

He walked a step or two toward them, and the men 
became silent. They were accustomed to speeches, to 
bombastic appeals, and were eager to test his quality. 
At last he spoke, not loud, but clear and calm, and with 
a peculiar quality and inflection which surprised and im- 
pressed every officer, and gave the whole regiment a new 
sensation . 

" Men, go to your quarters." 

The men sat dazed, astounded. It took time to grasp 
its entire significance. In the clip of this man's lips, in 
the clear-cut utterance of his command, and in the subtle 
inflection of his voice was made manifest the natural com- 
mander of men. The time for oratory was past. The 
period of action had come. 

As for the veteran of Monterey and Churubusco, a thrill 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS I 73 

of exultation ran through his blood. He was poor, — too 
poor to buy a uniform, — but he was in command again, 
and serving the United States. Everything now took on 
direction and certainty. He knew the essentially fine 
quality of his men, and felt confident of his power to bring 
them under control. 

As he stepped to the center before the regiment that 
night, the men looked at one another in amusement, and 
some were so bold as to jest in low voices concerning him. 
He wore nothing military save a pair of gray trousers 
with a stripe running down the outside seams, and an old 
sword, which he had found at the arsenal, such as the 
officers wore in the Mexican War. 

It had been the habit of Colonel Goode to seize upon 
the closing moment in daily parade to make a speech, 
and almost invariably to end by saying: "I know this 
regiment, men and officers alike, would march with me to 
the cannon's moutli ; but to renew and verify that pledge, 
the regiment will move forward two paces." 

The regiment now expected a speech from Colonel 
Grant. He returned the salute of the adjutant, and said 
to the aligned officers : 

" A soldier's first duty is to learn to obey his com- 
mander. I shall expect my orders to be obeyed as exactly 
and instantly as if we were on the field of battle." 

That was all, but again those who stood nearest him 
felt a little thrill of the blood. His voice had certainly 
precision and command in it. 

As the men turned back to quarters, discussion broke 
forth. Rustic jokes were passed upon him, and one young 
fellow made insulting gestures behind his back. Another 
daredevil slipped up behind him, and flipped his hat from 
his head. Grant turned and said, " Young man, that 's 
not very polite," and walked on to his quarters. 

" What do they mean by sending down a little man 
like that to command this regiment?" asked an indig- 
nant private. *' He can't pound dry sand in a straight 
hole." 

" He may be like a singed cat, more alive than he 
looks," said another. 



174 LIFE OF GRANT 

"Nonsense! He can't make a speech. Look at him! 
Look at the clothes he wears! Who is he, anyhow?" 

" Boys, let me tell you something," said a sergeant. " I 
stood close enough to him to see his eyes and the set of 
his jaw. I '11 tell you who he is : he 's the colonel of this 
regiment." 

In less than twenty-four hours Colonel Grant was called 
a " monster," a " fiend." The picnic, the filibustering 
expedition, had become a mihtary regiment under military 
discipline. 

A man of action, of discipline, of war, of experience, 
had assumed command. His lightest word was to be con- 
sidered. He did not threaten, nor wheedle, nor persuade ; 
he commanded ; and in the quiet glance of his blue-gray 
eyes, in the line of his lips, and in the quick downward 
inflections of his voice, there was something inexorable. 
He was never angry, never vindictive, but he was master. 

He stopped all drinking. He made the picket-line a 
reality. He put an end to foraging, arresting every in- 
subordinate and making him understand that lawlessness 
was past. Colonel Goode appeared that first night in the 
ranks, and there were camp rumors of insubordination 
brewing; but Grant arrested all that by ordering Goode 
from the regiment, and he slipped away into obscurity, 
to be seen no more. 

A big, worthless cur resisted arrest and defied the offi- 
cers. Grant appeared, serene as ever, 

"What is the matter?" 

" This man persists in bringing liquor into camp, and 
refuses to give it up." 

" Put him in the guard-house," 

" He resists arrest." 

The man began to swagger. Grant bore down upon 
him. There was something in his unwavering eyes and 
in his unfaltering step which made the bully hesitate. 

Grant seized him by the collar and gave him a quick 
jerk which made him spin like a top. Before he had 
gathered his faculties together he was hustled to the gate 
and kicked into the road. 

" Get out of my regiment," said the colonel. " I don't 



CAPTAIN GRANT AND THE POLITICAL COLONELS I 75 

want you in it. You 're not worth disciplining. If you 
come back I '11 have you shot." 

The second morning there were nearly a score of men 
tied up for leaving camp against orders, and for drunken- 
ness and disorder, among them a dangerous man called 
"Mexico," who cursed his commander and said: "For 
every minute I stand here I '11 have an ounce of your 
blood." 

" Gag that man," said Grant, quietly. 

One by one, as the hours passed, the other offenders 
were released by the officers of the guard ; but Grant 
released Mexico himself. He considered it well to let his 
men know that the bragger was harmless. 

This ended all question of Grant's power to command 
both himself and his men. Recalcitrants still read books 
of military regulations, and denied his right to do this or 
that ; but the great majority of the regiment, being excel- 
lent men and good soldiers, welcomed a colonel who knew 
his duties and the limits of his command. 

But even with this first recognition of his place and his 
power Grant had not escaped further humiliation. He 
had neither horse nor sword nor uniform, and, what was 
worse, had no money to buy them. His claim on the 
State was still unpaid. 

He obtained leave of absence, and returned to Gaiena 
to see his family and to secure necessary equipment. He 
was forced to borrow this money, and, for some reason, 
to borrow it outside his father's family. His old friend 
and valiant defender, A. A. Collins, once more assisted 
him. He was still in debt to people in St. Louis, and 
now assumed a further load of three hundred dollars 
with which to buy his necessary outfit. His father had 
either grown tired of lending money to his improvident 
eldest son, or Colonel Grant did not care to ask it. The 
fact remains that he borrowed the money through Mr. 
Collins. 

On the 28th of June the Seventh District Regiment 
was mustered in and became the Twenty-first Illinois 
Volunteers. Apparently little ceremony attended this 
event, for no mention of it appears in the daily papers ; 



176 LIFE OF GRANT 

but the editor of the "Register" speaks of visiting the 
camp and finding the men " buoyant under the command 
of Colonel Grant." They were ready to move, and when 
a call was made upon Governor Yates by General Fremont 
to send a regiment to the northern part of the State of 
Missouri, Grant said: " Send me." 

" I have no transportation," replied the governor. 

"I '11 find transportation," was the quick response. On 
the 2d of July he issued his first marching order, and on 
the 3d of July the men of the Twenty-first Illinois set 
their faces toward war, the first regiment to march soldier- 
fashion out of the State. 

Every day of the march developed his soldierly qualities. 
He taught his men how to mess, how to take care of 
themselves on the march. He put them to hard drill, and 
stopped all straggling. His guard-line cut off all skylark- 
ing of nights. He allowed no whisky in the camp. And 
yet, with all this strict discipline, he was never angry nor 
vindictive. If he punished a man, he did it in a quiet 
way, and in a spirit which did not enrage the one punished. 
" He looked very fine on horseback in his new colonel's 
uniform, and the regiment became proud of him, well 
knowing they had the best commander and the best regi- 
ment in the State." 



CHAPTER XXV 
grant's growing command 

A FEW of the readers of the St. Louis, Springfield, 
Galena, and Chicago papers during the summer of 
1 86 1 followed Grant as he emerged step by step from the 
obscurity of the unnamed and little regarded into the light 
of editorial criticism. 

He first appeared as " Colonel Grant," and was reported 
to be on his way to defend Missouri with a regiment of 
Illinois volunteers. While still a colonel he was put in 
command of several regiments at Mexico, Missouri, and 
there he perfected his organization and brought his soldiers 
under strict discipline. Here he achieved his first head- 
line : "Colonel Grant Moves against Harris." And in 
this sudden blazoning forth of his name his old acquain- 
tances in St. Louis were made aware of his identity. 

During his absence, one day, a telegram arrived at his 
headquarters in Mexico, Missouri, addressed to " Brigadier- 
General Grant." This superscription gave his subordi- 
nates the clue, and when he returned his regiment drew 
up in line, and raised their first cheer for General Gra?it. 
It was peculiarly fitting that the Twenty-first Illinois 
siiould use these two words for the first time among 
American soldiers. 

The message was from the Hon. Mr. Washburne, say- 
ing: "You have this day been appointed by the President 
brigadier-general of volunteers. Accept my congratula- 
tions." The Illinois representatives had sent in his name 
together with a batch of others, and Lincoln, who was 

177 



178 LIFE OF GRANT 

turning out brigadiers in squads, had made no exception 
of Grant. He was commissioned without further indorse- 
ment. 

Immediately after his promotion General Grant was 
put in command of a district at Ironton, Missouri, where 
he entered upon preparations for a campaign against 
General Hardee, and dreamed over maps and planned 
great campaigns down the Mississippi Valley, which, it 
seemed, he had little chance of ever making realities; for 
he was still very obscure, and nobody believed in him 
specially, save Editor Houghton of Galena, Washburne 
in Washington, and the men of the Twenty- first Illinois 
Regiment. 

Shortly after his promotion he went up to St. Louis, 
and an old friend speaks of seeing him at this time : " I 
found him a very different person from the gloomy man 
I used to know in the streets of St. Louis a year before. 
He was in his element, and was calm, alert, and confi- 
dent." 

All through Missouri are men and women willing to 
testify to the justice and courtesy of Grant's command. 
He stopped all pillaging, and insisted that everything used 
by the army should be paid for. He was kind and ap- 
proachable always, and all petitioners were sure to get a 
hearing. He had no wish to impress upon any one his 
importance as commander. Yet he showed himself capable 
of larger things, and men found this out for themselves. 
He never talked about himself, and never asked pro- 
motion. 

Soon after the receipt of his commission, and just before 
he was to move against Hardee, General B. M. Prentiss 
appeared at Ironton, with general orders from Fremont 
which placed him in chief command of all the forces in 
that district. 

Grant was deeply hurt and discouraged by this order, 
which made no mention of his name ; it merely assigned 
Prentiss to the command. He could not understand the 
animus of this arbitrary proceeding, but submitted, merely 
entering a protest : " I am your senior in command, and 
I do not consider you are relieving me. I am not bound 



grant's growing command 179 

by military etiquette to obey you." He then gave to 
Prentiss the situation of the troops, and went to St. Louis. 
He had great difficulty in seeing Fremont, who also con- 
sidered him of little account. Grant reached him at last, 
and was immediately ordered to command at Jefferson 

City. 

A few days later Fremont, in a letter to Prentiss, throws 
.some light upon his previous action : 

When you were ordered to go to Ironton and take the place 
of General Grant, who was transferred to Jefferson City, it was 
under the impression that his appointment was of a later date 
than your own. By the official list published it appears, how- 
ever, that he is your senior in rank. 

This letter would seem to indicate that Grant laid his 
case before Fremont, and pending investigation had been 
placed in command at Jefferson City. 

General Grant had organized his troops, and was once 
more ready to proceed to battle, this time against Sterling 
Price, when he was again relieved. Colonel Jeff C. Davis 
appeared, with an imperative order from General Fremont 
which required Grant to report at St. Louis for special 
orders. By these special orders General Grant was 
assigned the command of all the troops of southeastern 
Missouri and southern Illinois. It gave to him the com- 
mand of the expedition against General Jeff Thompson, 
and brought him into the region of great campaigns. 
Grant was profoundly pleased at finding himself once more 
headed toward the Mississippi. 

This change of front was the outcome (according to the 
testimony of Montgomery Blair) of the plan of a Missis- 
sippi campaign which Grant had sent to the President in 
early May, through the kindness of Governor Yates. At 
a cabinet meeting friends of General Grant asked that he 
be put in command at Cairo, and Lincoln, recalling Grant's 
name and plan, readily agreed to make the suggestion to 
Fremont. 

Cairo, at the time Brigadier-General Grant assumed 
command of the district. w^5 a gmall, low-lying town built 



l8o LIFE OF GRANT 

along the river. It was not a sightly town, and it was 
an extremely disloyal town, filled with rough river-men, 
gamblers, and roustabouts from the four great rivers which 
center in this region. The one tolerable hotel, the St. 
Charles, fronted the levee, and there General Grant took 
up his headquarters. 

His office consisted of a suite of rooms in a business 
block a short distance up the street. Its windows fronted 
on the wide river, and there he spent his quiet hours, 
smoking his long pipe, and gazing abstractedly out upon 
the water, with a map upon his knees, planning battles to 
open the Mississippi. He was a great student of maps, 
and they formed a large part of his wall decorations. 
" He had not a single trained soldier or officer of the reg- 
ular army under his command. Officers and men alike 
required instruction. He was busy from morning till 
night,— and frequently from night till morning,— writing 
orders, indorsing papers, and doing other work that fell to 
him." He had few leisure hours. 

All accounts agree that the townspeople of Cairo were 
surprised at the unmilitary port and methods of the 
general. They were accustomed to the pomp and cere- 
mony of militia colonels, and the excited charging to and 
fro of would-be Napoleons who were already on the 
ground. Colonel Oglesby, who was in command of the 
post, on being approached by Grant the first time, took 
him to be a " refugee who had blown into the place, in 
need of transportation to the North." 

" I thought I was something of a Napoleon myself," 
said Oglesby, quaintly. " I had my troops spread out all 
over the country, and had aides coming and going, and 
things in miHtary order, when in comes this small, rusty- 
coated man, and sits down at my table and begins to 
write orders. It did n't take me long to find out that I 
did not know much about war, after all." 

But in general the citizens of Cairo knew very little 
about General Grant. He attended strictly to his military 
duties, and, though always approachable, was an ab- 
stracted, silent man, absorbed in his own afifairs, and little 
mindful of social claims. In a few days his coming and 



grant's growing command i8i 

going attracted .Ittle notice. He wore no uniform, and 
used the least possible military ceremony consistent with 
good discipline. 

He sent for John A. Rawlins (the fervid orator of the 
first war meeting in Galena) to become assistant adjutant- 
general on his staff. Rawlins proved a very capable man, 
and lifted from his chief's shoulders a great deal of the 
business routme of the office. Lieutenant J. D. Webster, 
an able soldier who had accompanied the first regiment 
from Chicago to Cairo, became adviser and chief of staff. 

Brigadier-General Grant demonstrated at once his com- 
prehension of the situation. The second day after taking 
command a scout came in and reported a force of Con- 
federates moving northward to take Paducah, which was 
at the mouth of the Tennessee River, only a short distance 
above Cairo. It was the gate to a great waterway, and 
Grant perceived at once the importance of its capture. 
He telegraphed Fremont for permission to take it. He 
received no reply, but nevertheless began to arrange for 
the movement. He telegraphed later in the day, with all 
preparations made, saying: "Unless I hear from you to 
the contrary, I shall move on Paducah to-night." 

Not hearing a word from Fremont, at about half-past 
ten at night he said to his staff: " I will take Paducah, if 
I lose my commission by it." 

He took possession of the town early next morning, 
without firing a gun. A force of the enemy estimated at 
four thousand strong was actually on the way, and within 
three hours' march of the city, when the Northern troops 
entered. They turned back at the news of Grant's ap- 
proach, and Paducah was saved to the Union. This was 
the first town he had ever entered in hostile manner, 
himself in sole command, and he felt it due to the citizens 
to explain his presence. On September 6 he issued an 
address to the citizens : 

PROCLAMATION 

To THE Citizens of Paducah: 

I have come among you, not as an enemy, but as your friend 
and fellow-citizen ; not to injure or annoy you, but to respect the 



l82 LIFE OF GRANT 

rights and defend and enforce the rights of^_ all loyal citizens. 
An enemy in rebellion against our common govcrimient has 
taken possession of and planted its guns ujx)!) the soil of Kentucky 
and fired upon our flag. Hickman and Columbus are in his 
hands ; he is moving upon your city. I am here to defend you 
against this enemy, and to assert and maintain the authority and 
sovereignty of your government and mine. I have nothing to 
do with opinions. I deal only with armed rebellion and its aiders 
and abettors. You can pursue your usual avocations without 
fear or hindrance. The strong arm of the government is here 
to protect its friends and to punish only its enemies. Whenever 
it is manifest that you are able to defend yourselves, to maintain 
the authority of your government and protect the rights of all its 
loyal citizens, I shall withdraw the forces under my command 
from your city. U. S. Grant. 

This prompt action and noble proclamation turned the 
tide of the State's sentiment toward union. 

Lincoln, reading this dignified address, said: "The 
man who can write like that is fitted to command in the 
West." It bore out the remarkable statement of Editor 
Houghton of the Galena " Gazette " : " Just men like 
General Grant can put down this rebellion ; vindictive 
men never can." And in the House of Representatives, 
Richardson of Illinois said, in relation to making Grant a 
major-general: " I wish that proclamation could be written 
in letters of gold on the sky, that everybody might read 
it." Thus Washburne was not alone in his indorsement 
of Grant. 

Grant returned to Cairo, leaving only a garrison at 
Paducah. His troops were eager to fight. Some of the 
ofihcers were afraid the war would be over before they 
could distinguish themselves sufficiently to go to Congress 
on the strength of their military career. They held in 
mind Jackson and Harrison and Taylor, and they desired 
to make war a short cut to political glory. 

Grant also was quite ready to fight, and the chance 
came early in November. Up to that time Fremont had 
refused to allow him any independent movement ; but 
upon taking the field against Price in Missouri, he felt it 
necessary to have Grant make a " diversion " to keep 



grant's growing command 183 

General Polk, who was at Columbus, from sending rein- 
forcements to Price. This diversion resulted in the battle 
of Belmont, which was successful, from Grant's point of 
view, as it prevented Polk's reinforcing Price. 

The Confederates held Columbus, a small village some 
twenty miles below Cairo, and had intrenched on the 
opposite or western side of the river. Grant, with 
McClernand second in command (and, to the citizens of 
Cairo, equal in command), left headquarters at about dusk 
on the 6th of November, and swung into the current. No 
one knew what was to be done, but as the transports 
moved on down the river the men said exultantly : 
"We 're going to take Columbus." 

Grant's boats lay on the river above Belmont till dawn. 
At early light he disembarked his troops and moved 
against the enemy, whose ranks fell back. The Union 
troops pressed on bravely, and after four hours' fighting 
carried the camp of the Confederates, and drove them to 
the river, where they cowered behind the steep banks, 
awaiting capture. 

But now began a singular yet natural action. The 
Union men lost their heads in joy and self-glorification. 
The entire Confederacy had fallen! "This ends it," they 
cried exultantly to one another, and went about shaking 
hands and shouting with joy, while some of the officers 
seized the opportunity to make flamboyant political 
addresses to those who would listen. Others fell upon 
the camp and began to "appropriate" the spoils. All 
order disappeared. The men at this stage of the war 
were all generals, and they inferred Grant's plan to have 
been the capture and defense of this point — which was 
impossible with the force at his command. 

Grant, however, was too old a soldier to be caught thus. 
The veteran of Cerro Gordo and Molino del Rey did 
not lose his head in a skirmish. He saw long lines of 
gray soldiers forming on the opposite side of the river; 
he saw transports swinging to, ready to disembark troops ; 
and he knew the batteries across the river would open as 
soon as the true state of affairs became known to the 
Confederate commanders. Therefore he tried to rally the 



1 84 LIFE OF GRANT 

men. He rode among his officers, saying : " Get your 
men into line. We must get out of this." 

But the confusion and tumult prevented the men from 
hearing or heeding the commands of the officers. The 
situation called for decisive measures. 

" Fire the tents,'' said the general to an aide. 

The tents were fired, and as the smoke rolled over the 
trees the batteries of Columbus opened, and began to 
heave "two-gallon jugs of grape-shot" into the mob of 
blue-coats. This brought the men to their senses. They 
dropped their spoils, and became as panic-stricken as 
they had been vainglorious a moment before. A rush 
toward the boats began. 

But their delay had allowed the enemy to send troops 
across below and take position behind the Union forces 
and between them and the boats. A column of Confed- 
erates appeared at the right, marching to intercept them, 
and soon another was seen on the left. 

" My God, we 're surrounded! " cried one of the officers 
in Grant's hearing. 

" We cut our way in, and we can cut our way out," 
was the grim reply ; and so, in passable order and under 
sharp firing, the troops fought their way back to the boats. 

There, while the embarking of the wounded was taking 
place. Grant rode back alone to visit a rear-guard he had 
posted. He was amazed to find they had fled to the 
boats. This reconnoitering nearly led to his capture, for 
when he came back the boats were under brisk fire of 
the enemy's musketry, and were struggling to get out 
into the stream, each with the landward wheel spinning 
uselessly in the air, the far side being overcrowded with 
fleeing soldiery. The general's uniform was covered by 
a sort of rain-coat, and his boat's captain gave him no 
thought, and was steaming away when an officer cried 
out: " Put in your boat; that is General Grant." 

There was no path down the steep bank, but Grant's 
marvelous command over horses came into use. At his 
word, the horse put his fore feet over the bank, slid down 
the sand on his haunches, and trotted aboard over a single 
gang-plank. This ended the battle of Belmont, which is 



grant's growing command 185 

forever memorable to the South as " one victory, at least, 
over General Grant." 

Returning to Cairo, Grant set himself to drilling, pro- 
visioning, and otherwise preparing his army for active 
service. He was eager to push on to the South. Ho 
wished to get possession of the Tennessee and Cumberland 
rivers before the enemy had time to reinforce and fortify. 
But while General Fremont had been ill disposed to take 
suggestions, his successor, who had just assumed chief 
command in the West, General H. W. Halleck, was even 
more reluctant to allow Grant to move on his own 
motion. 

Grant appealed to General Halleck at once to be allowed 
to advance on Forts Henry and Donelson, the fortifica- 
tions which held the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. 
Halleck did not reply, and little was done during Decem- 
ber but " prepare for war." 

On the 6th of January Grant went to St. Louis to see 
General Halleck in person about this movement, and 
incidentally to visit his old homes in Gravois and iDt. 
Louis. This home-coming was not without a certain 
gratification. His command was growing; he now con- 
trolled an important military district, and his troops were 
ready for action. At the home of his friends he came 
in contact once more with those who had pitied and 
patronized him only a year before. He sat at the same 
fire with Mr. and Mrs. Boggs, no longer a penniless, 
despairing man, but the alert and masterful general of 
ten thousand men. Mrs. Boggs now felt her home to be 
all too humble for the use of General Grant and the dis- 
tinguished friends who called to do him honor. 

He found his neighbors in Gravois still largely seces- 
sional in sentiment, either openly or in secret ; but he 
went about among them freely, without body-guard, and 
to his old-time courtesy and manliness when a farmer 
among them he owed his escape from capture by the 
" Knights of the Golden Circle." A few hotheads met 
to plan his kidnapping, but his old neighbors and friends 
arose against the plan and stopped it. 

His trip was in a sense a failure. Halleck cut short his 



1 86 LIFE OF GRANT 

explanation of plans to take Fort Henry, and turned con 
temptuously away. Grant felt this deeply, for, though an 
undemonstrative man, he had in fact a soul of keen sensi- 
bility, and felt discourtesy as poignantly as though it were 
a lash. 

Meanwhile he was slowly gaining recognition in the 
West. Here and there a newspaper correspondent began 
to perceive something worth while in the " silent general." 
His command was an important one, and his family and 
friends were highly surprised and delighted at the distinc- 
tion he had attained. His father came to see him, in 
a transport of returning pride in Ulysses. Nevertheless, 
he warned him : " Now, Ulysses, you have a good position, 
I hope you will let well enough alone." But Mrs. Grant, 
who had never lost faith in him, said : " Ulysses can fill 
any position he is called to." He was paying his debts 
in St. Louis and Galena, and his wife and children were 
thriving and happy. War has its human recomDenses, 
after ali. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

GRANT CAPTURES NATIONAL FAME 

IN spite of Halleck's rebufif, Grant returned again to his 
plan to attack Fort Henry. He was not a man to 
allow pique to stand in the way of a great enterprise. He 
laid the matter before Commodore Foote, who was in 
command of the flotilla of newly finished gunboats then 
lying at Cairo ; and the commodore, being much impressed 
both with Grant and his plans, joined him in the request 
to attack the fort. 

At last Halleck consented. Immediately upon receiving 
the word Grant began to move. On the 5th of February 
he advanced against Fort Henry. It capitulated the next 
day, and he telegraphed Halleck the news, giving full 
credit to Commodore Foote: " Fort Henry is ours. The 
gunboats silenced the batteries before the investment 
was completed." And then, with a spirit which had not 
before appeared in the Northern army, he said: " I shall 
take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th, and return 
to Fort Henry." And this he would have done had not 
nature laid a strong restraining hand upon his plans. 

In place of swift advance across the twelve miles of 
land which divided the two rivers and their forts, a period 
of annoying delay intervened, accompanied by much 
suffering on the part of the troops. Violent storms arose. 
Grant was in an agony of impatience, yet nothing could 
be done but wait. The roads were swimming in water ; 
" the infantry could hardly march, and to move artillery 
was impossible." He had only about fifteen thousand 
men, and had orders from Halleck to hold Fort Henry 

187 



1 88 LIFE OF GRANT 

and to intrench, though he felt that " fifteen thousand men 
were worth more on the I2th than fifty thousand men a 
httle later." 

At last he moved out of Fort Henry, calm and resolute, 
although approaching a battle before which all his com- 
mands and all his Mexico campaigns were insignificant. 
Fort Henry had been a gunboat victory, but now his little 
army was marching against twenty-one thousand men 
strongly intrenched. The unavoidable delay had allowed 
the enemy to reinforce by boat from Nashville. 

Halleck had conferred with Brigadier-General W. T. 
Sherman, who was at that time in St. Louis, and issued 
an order assigning Sherman to command of the District 
of Cairo, and making Grant commander of the District 
of West Tennessee. He was calling loudly for more 
troops to reinforce Grant, for he could not, on his own 
account, afford to see the attack of Donelson fail. He 
sent General W. T. Sherman to Paducah to act as for- 
warding officer there, and wired General D. C. Buell, who 
was commanding the Army of the Ohio in Kentucky: 
" Come and help me take Donelson." 

When Grant invested the fort the first day he had only 
General McClernand and General C. F. Smith with him 
— about fifteen thousand men. Commodore Foote had 
not arrived, and General Lew Wallace was on the road. 
This showed the spirit of Grant's command. He did not 
hesitate to assume the responsibility of besieging twenty- 
one thousand Confederates, strongly intrenched. Here 
was soldierly promptness, dash, and grit. He was cut 
off from Halleck and the War Department, and master 
of everything in the field. Gideon J. Pillow, the senior in 
command of the Confederate forces, was a Mexican War 
veteran. Grant knew him, and had no fear of him. 

Halleck telegraphed Grant to " strengthen the land side 
of Fort Henry, and transfer guns to resist a land attack," 
at the very time the army was closing relentlessly round 
Donelson, under Grant's leadership. On the 13th there 
was some fighting as the besieging army moved into new 
and stronger positions, but the night was more terrible 
than the battle upon the troops ; they were ordered to 



GRANT CAPTURES NATIONAL FAME 1 89 

sleep upon their arms and without camp-fires. Sleet fell, 
and it grew bitterly cold toward morning. Grant quar- 
tered in a farm-house at the left. He slept little, being 
apprehensive of an early attack before reinforcements 
could arrive. 

During the night Commodore Foote's fleet steamed up, 
and General Lew Wallace came marching in from Fort 
Henry, and took position between Smith and McClernand. 
Grant was now confident. He ordered an attack by the 
gunboats, while the army held the enemy within the lines, 
his plan being to bag the entire Confederate army. The 
gunboats failed to get above the batteries, however, and 
were forced to fall back disabled, leaving the river open 
to the Confederate boats. 

That night Grant telegraphed the situation : " Our 
troops invest Donelson. ... I feel confident of success." 
To General Cullum, Halleck's chief of staff, stationed at 
Cairo as forwarding officer, he wired : " Appearances indi- 
cate now that we will have a protracted siege." It was 
well the army did not read this telegram, for the storm 
continued, and they were not merely cold, but hungry as 
well. They bore it all with such cheer as a freezing and 
starving soldier can muster to his comfort. Grant went 
to bed thinking that he might be obliged to bring up tents 
and shovels, after all. 

Before daylight on the 15th he received a note from 
Commodore Foote, in command of the flotilla, asking him 
to come to the flag-ship, as he was too much injured to 
leave the boats. The general at once mounted and rode 
away. The roads were very bad, and he could not move 
out of a walk. " He came on the boat wearing a battered 
old hat, the muddiest man in the army. He was chewing 
a cigar, and was perfectly cool and self-possessed." He 
found the commodore and his boats about equally disabled. 
After a conference with him. Grant gave him leave to 
retire, and started upon his return to the front. 

On his way he met his aide, white with alarm and 
excitement. " The enemy has made a fierce attack on 
the forces of McClernand." 

Grant set spur to his horse, and left the aide far behind. 



IQO 



LIFE OF GRANT 



He came upon the scene of action, his old clay-bank 
spattering the yellow mud in every direction, a most 
welcome figure. There was need of him. With cool 
brain and keen eyes, he rode rapidly along the lines. He 
saw no dismay in Smith's division ; his command was 
intact and eager for battle. Wallace's lines were in 
order. But McClernand, on the right, had sustained a 
heavy attack, and was still threatened, and the brave but 
inexperienced commander was in consultation with General 
Wallace and asking for reinforcements. As Grant rode 
along he saw the men standing in knots, talking in a most 
excited manner. " The soldiers had their muskets, but no 
ammunition, while there were tons of it near at hand." 
They were disturbed and apprehensive, just at a point 
where retreat, even rout, was possible. 

The general heard one discouraged man say ; " Why, 
they have come out to fight all day ; they have got their 
knapsacks full of grub." He turned quickly. " Is that 
true? Bring me one." 

He opened two or three, and found three days' rations 
in each. His trained eyes read in all this a different 
story. In one minute he showed himself a great com- 
mander. 

He turned to his staff, and said : " They are attempting 
to force their way out. The one who attacks first now 
will be victorious." Then, to McClernand and Wallace: 
" Gentlemen, the position of our right must be retaken. 
I shall order an immediate assault on the left. Be ready 
to advance at the sound of Smith's guns." As he rode 
down the line, his aide, at his direction, called out : 

"Fill your cartridge-boxes, quick, and get into line! 
The enemy is trying to escape, and must not be permitted 
to do so." 

At once the Union forces lined up, responsive to the 
power of unhesitating leadership. The commander rode 
rapidly to the left, arranging a grand assault. He found 
General Smith alert, with his troops in order ready to 
advance. " General, the enemy has tried to force his way 
out on our right. I think you had better attack soon. 
He has undoubtedlv weakened the line before you." 



GRANT CAPTURES NATIONAL FAME IQl 

"Very well, sir," replied Smith; " I am ready to move 
at any time." Grant turned and rode again toward the 
center. When all was arranged he sent an aide to tell 
General Smith that he was ready. 

" General Smith," said the messenger, " you are ordered 
to assault immediately and in force." 

"Very well, sir; I am ready," said the resolute old 
warrior ; and drawing his sword, he turned to his troops, 
and said : " We are ordered to attack the works imme- 
diately in front. Are you all ready?" 

"We are! " shouted the men, in reply. 

"Very well. Ready! Close ranks! Charge bayonets! 
Double-quick! Forward, march! " And the left wing of 
Grant's army advanced. The assault became general all 
along the line, and the enemy was driven back. The con- 
ditions of the morning were restored ; the enemy was 
again shut in, and night fell once more upon the Union 
forces, unsheltered and hungry, but as confident now of 
victory as was their imperturbable commander. 

On the night of the 15th, within the fort, a strange and 
passionate drama was being enacted. The three Con- 
federate commanders, Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner, held an 
acrimonious council. General Floyd, who had but recently 
assumed command, begged leave to turn the command over 
to General Pillow. Pillow declined, but was quite willing 
that General Buckner should assume the honor and do as 
he thought best in the matter. General Buckner was a 
soldier, a graduate of West Point, and a Mexican War 
veteran. He did not anticipate hanging, provided he 
surrendered, and was unwilling to shed the blood of his 
soldiers needlessly. He regarded the situation as one 
warranting surrender. He accepted the command, and 
sat down to write a letter to Grant. 

General Pillow begged to know if he were privileged 
to depart. 

" Yes, provided you go before the terms of capitulation 
are agreed upon," was Buckner's curt reply. 

Floyd seized two steamers, and escaped with about 
three thousand men. 

Pillow fled in a flatboat, while Colonel Forrest, in 



192 LIFE OF GRANT 

command of the cavalry, forded the river and got safely 
away with a regiment of horse. 

General Buckner sturdily held his ground, but sent a 
messenger to sue for terms ; and in answer Grant replied 
in the simplest and most direct manner, with no thought 
of how his letter would read to any one except General 
Buckner: 

No terms except immediate and unconditional surrender can 
be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works. 

Buckner grumbled at these " unchivalrous terms," but 
yielded, and when he met Grant within the defenses he 
said, with a bow and smile : 

" General, as they say in Mexico, this house and all it 
contains is yours." 

A moment later Grant said : " I thought Pillow was in 
command." 

" He was," replied Buckner. 

" Where is he now?" 

" Gone." 

"Why did he go?" 

" Well, he thought you 'd rather get hold of him than 
any other man in the Southern Confederacy." 

" Oh," said Grant, quickly, with a smile, " if I 'd got 
him I 'd let him go again. He would do us more good 
commanding you fellows!" 

General Buckner was in fact the Captain Buckner who 
had come to Grant's relief so handsomely in New York 
in 1854, when he landed from his ship poor and friendless. 
Grant recalled this generous action, and while he did not 
allow his gratitude to interfere with his duty, yet when 
matters of the surrender were finally arranged he placed 
his private purse at General Buckner's disposal. 

The relations of the two commanders continued ami- 
cable to the last. Grant did everything he could to make 
the men in gray comfortable, " showing himself a humane 
and magnanimous conqueror." 

With pardonable pride, and with something more than 
his usual expression of emotion, Grant issued a congratu- 



GRANT CAPTURES NATIONAL FAME I93 

latory order to his troops, and sent a despatch of mathe- 
matical brevity to Halleck announcing his capture of Fort 
Donelson. He then sat down to plan an immediate 
advance on Nashville, which was uncovered by the fall of 
Donelson. He believed that the way was open deep into 
the Southern Confederacy, and that by prompt action the 
battle of Donelson could be made to mean a hundred 
times more than the mere capture of fifteen thousand 
troops. 

Instantly his great victory flamed over the land. The 
ringing of bells, the sound of cannon, the flare of bonfires, 
announced the joy of the people over the first great suc- 
cess in the West. Horsemen galloped up the farm lanes 
with shouts of triumph, and the citizens came together to 
rejoice, believing that the end of the war had come. Even 
metropolitan dailies considered it " the downfall of the 
Confederacy," and suddenly the nation inquired: "Who 
is this man Grant, who fights battles and wins them?" 



CHAPTER XXVII 

GRANT PUT UNDER ARREST BY GENERAL HALLECK 

''jPHE victory of Donelson lifted General Grant into 
X national fame in a day, but it also turned upon him 
the burning light of envious criticism. All the disap- 
pointed contractors, all the jealous political soldiers who 
feared that the war had ended without making them dis- 
tinguished, all the sneering old army officers, turned to 
and helped swell the chorus of the " copperhead journals " 
of the Northern States that attempted to blacken and dis- 
credit the character and belittle the powers of General Grant. 
The feeling that the war was over, and that the victor 
of Donelson was to be the national hero, added to the 
zeal of his detractors. In the Eastern cities a discussion 
waxed bitter as to who deserved the honors of Donelson. 
General McClellan's friends claimed them for him ; Foote's 
partizans called it a naval victory ; Fremont's adherents 
mourned the injustice which had robbed him of his rightful 
dues as the projector of this plan ; Brigadier-General 
McClernand claimed to have borne the brunt of it ; and 
Halleck, after thanking everybody remotely concerned 
with the expedition except Grant, smilingly appeared on 
a hotel balcony in St. Louis, and claimed the lion's share 
for himself. 

The one honorable exception was Secretary Stanton, 
who took no part in the attempt to reap where he had 
not sown. He wrote at once an open letter to Editor 
Greeley, disclaiming the honor : 

Sir: I cannot sufTer undue merit to be ascribed to my office 
for this action. The glory of our recent victories belongs to the 
brave officers and soldiers that fought the battles. No share 

194 



GRANT UNDER ARREST 195 

belongs to me. What, under the blessing of Providence, I con- 
ceive to be the true organization of victory and military com- 
bination to end the war was declared in a few words by General 
Grant's message to General Buckner : " I propose to move 
immediately on your works." 

This letter of Stanton's did more to fix the fame of 
" Unconditional Surrender Grant " in the minds of the 
people than any other one cause at that time. 

From all that appears, Halleck had been anxious to 
have any one but Grant wear the great honors of the 
victory. In his excited manoeuvering for position, he 
had telegraphed Commodore Foote on the iith: " Make 
your name famous by the capture of Fort Donelson and 
Clarksville " ; and after the capture of Donelson he had 
telegraphed Stanton : " Make Smith major-general, and 
all the country will applaud you." He now sent a tele- 
gram of congratulation to General Hunter in Kansas, 
thanking him for promptness in sending reinforcements ; 
he also forwarded congratulatory messages to Commodore 
Foote, but not one word of congratulation to Grant. 

At midnight of the 20th, as General Grant and 
Commodore Foote were finishing the details of an imme- 
diate movement on Nashville, a telegram from Halleck 
arrived, forbidding gunboats to move above Clarksville. 
Grant read the message in silence, and passed it to Com- 
modore Foote. Foote said : " Well, that ends our move- 
ment." 

Being anxious, however, to know what had happened 
at Nashville, Grant next proceeded to Nashville in a 
single transport to meet and confer with Buell. He con- 
sidered this entirely within his province ; but Halleck was 
pleased to consider it " leaving command without permis- 
sion." He had been telegraphing to Grant for several 
days without receiving an answer, and was very much 
enraged. Of his excited telegrams Grant was unaware. 
General McClellan, commander-in-cliief, had been asking 
Halleck for returns of his troops, and Halleck, in turn, 
had been attempting to reach Grant for records of the 
troops at Donelson. Halleck, therefore, reported to 



196 LIFE OF GRANT 

McClellan that Grant had left his command without 
leave, and that his troops were in disorder. 

McClellan, quite ready to believe ill things of Grant, 
gave Halleck power to arrest him, and so in this splendid 
moment, when everybody was sounding his praise, when 
the question of making him major-general was being 
debated, and Congress was passing votes of praise and 
thanks to him. Grant was being disgraced by Halleck. 

Upon his return from Nashville, some days later, he 
found this telegram awaiting him: 

You will place General C. F. Smith in command of expedition, 
and remain yourself at Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my 
orders to report strength and positions of your command? 

Grant was astounded. He replied mildly, but with a 
strong feeling of deep personal wrong : 

Your despatch of yesterday received. I did all I could to 
get the returns of the strength of my command. Every move I 
made was reported daily to your chief of staff, who must have 
failed to keep you properly posted. I have done my very best 
to obey orders and to carry out the interests of the service. If 
my course is not satisfactory, remove me at once. I do not 
wish to impede in any way the success of our armies. I have 
averaged writing more than once a day since leaving Cairo to 
keep you informed of my position, and it is no fault of mine if 
you have not received my letters. My going to Nashville was 
strictly intended for the good of the service, and not to gratify 
any desire of my own. 

Believing sincerely that I must have enemies between you 
and myself who are trying to impair my usefulness, I respectfully 
ask to be relieved from further duty in the department. 

Halleck replied, March 8 : 

You are mistaken. There is no enemy between you and me. 
There is no letter of yours stating number and position of your 
command since capture of Donelson. General McClellan has 
asked for it repeatedly with reference to ulterior movements, and 
1 could not give him the information. He is out of all patience 
waiting for it. Answer by telegraph in general terms. 



GRANT UNDER ARREST 197 

Grant replied : 

I will do all in my power to advance the expedition now 
started [Smith's expedition toward Corinth, which was rightfully 
his own]. You had a better chance for knowing my strength 
whilst surrounding Donelson than I had [through Sherman and 
Cullum, who were forwarding troops]. Troops were reporting 
daily by your order, and were immediately assigned to brigades. 
There were no orders received from you till the 28th of February 
to make out returns, and I made every effort to get them in as 
early as possible, I have always been ready to move anywhere, 
regardless of consequences to myself, but with a disposition to 
take the best care of the troops under my command. I renew 
my application to be relieved from further duty. Returns have 
been sent. 

Halleck, in reply, explains a little more in detail : 

Your letter of the 5th instant, just received, contains the first 
and only information of your actual forces. If you have sent 
them before, I have not received them. General McClellan 
repeatedly ordered me to report to him daily the numbers and 
positions of your forces. This I could not do, and the fault 
was certainly not mine, for I telegraphed you time and again 
for the information, but could get no answer. This certainly 
indicated a great want of order and system in your command, 
the blame of which was partially thrown on me, and perhaps 
justly, for it is the duty of every commander to compel those 
under him to obey orders and to enforce discipline. Don't let 
such neglect occur again, for it is equally discreditable to you 
and to me. I really felt ashamed to telegraph back to Washing- 
ton time and again that I was unable to give the strength of 
your command. 

On March 1 1, by the President's war order, Halleck se- 
cured his ambitious desire to control all the armies of the 
Mississippi. McClellan became the active commander of 
the Army of the Potomac, and Halleck commanded Buell, 
Hunter, and Smith, with Grant still in the background at 
Fort Henry as forwarding officer for Smith. 

It was a painful moment to General Grant as he saw 
the great army which he had led to victory steaming away 



198 LIFE OF GRANT 

up the river toward the enemy with another man in com- 
mand. One of his subordinates called to see him at Fort 
Henry, and was much moved by the expression of deep 
sadness on the face of his general. He was in great dejec- 
tion. The army he had organized and led so splendidly 
was passing out of his hands. 

" After alluding to his position, the general took from 
his pocket Halleck's curt despatch. When his friend 
looked up from reading it he saw tears on General Grant's 
face. He said mournfully : ' I don't know what they 
mean to do with me.' Then he added with a sad cadence 
in his voice: * What command have I now? 

Tears on the face of Ulysses Grant meant the keenest 
suffering. All seemed lost a second time in his life. 

But the chief man of the nation now took a persona) 
interest in the case. He sent for men who knew Grant 
personally, and satisfied himself that an injustice had been 
done. On the lOth of March, while Grant was being held 
in disgrace at Fort Henry, the adjutant-general wrote to 
Halleck in a calm and fateful way, saying that the Presi- 
dent wished General Halleck to investigate and report at 
once. Halleck at once acknowledged his previously hasty 
action, and completely exonerated Grant: 

I am satisfied from investigation that General Grant acted 
from good intentions and from a desire to subserve the public 
interests. 

General Grant has made the proper explanations, and has 
been directed to resume his command in the field. As he acted 
from a praiseworthy but mistaken zeal for the public service in 
going to Nashville and leaving his command, I respectfully 
recommend that no further notice be taken of it. There never 
has been any want of military subordination on the part of 
General Grant, and his failure to make returns of his forces has 
been explained as resulting partly from the failure of colonels oi 
regiments to report to him on their arrival, and partly from an 
interruption of telegraphic communication. All these irregu- 
larities have now been remedied. 

Halleck, now in fine fettle over his promotion to chief 
command in the West, and understanding that Lincoln 



GRANT UNDER ARREST 199 

had laid strong hand upon affairs, answered Grant's 
repeated desire to be relieved till such time as his case 
could go before the higher authorities, by saying: 

You cannot be relieved of your command. There is no good 
reason for it. I am certain that all which the authorities at 
Washington ask is that you enforce discipline and punish the 
disorderly. The power is in your hands ; use it, and you will 
be sustained by all above you. Instead of relieving you, I wish 
you, as soon as your new army is in the field, to assume the 
immediate command and lead it on to new victories. 

To this Grant made grateful answer. He had no means 
of knowing from what source this change came. 

After your letter inclosing copy of anonymous letter upon 
which severe censure was based, I felt as though it would be 
impossible for me to serve longer without a court of inquiry. 
[He did not know that Lincoln had ordered an investigation.] 
Your telegram of yesterday, however, places such a different 
phase upon my position that I will again assume command, and 
give every effort to the success of our cause. Under the worst 
circumstances I would do the same. 

P. S. Since the writing of above yours of the 9th instant is 
received. I certainly received but one telegraphic despatch, up 
to the 28th of February, to furnish reports of my strength. 

This ended, for the time, Halleck's attempt to degrade 
and subordinate Grant. 

Grant at once took passage up the river to join his army, 
and made his headquarters at a little hamlet called Savan- 
nah, a few miles below the place where the army had been 
disposed by General C. F. Smith. Pittsburg Landing 
was merely the terminus of a road at a wharf at which 
steamers could land. The road, an ordinary dirt road, 
came down a ravine to a couple of log huts. The army 
was debarked on the southwest side of the river at this 
point because of its nearness to Corinth, where the Con- 
federate forces were again assembling. 

Grant had such loyal regard for General Smith's ability 
that he made no change in the disposition of the forces, 



200 LIFE OF GRANT 

although he might not have chosen this spot for debarka- 
tion. It was, in fact, a fairly strong position. There was 
a deep creek on either hand, and the river at the back 
made attack possible only from the front. Sherman was 
in advance. Delay was dangerous, and Grant's desire 
was to advance ; but he was under Halleck's absolute 
command, and by his orders he lay waiting at Pittsburg 
Landing for the coming of Buell's army from Kentucky, 
while Albert Sidney Johnston, a brilliant and powerful 
Southern leader, hurried his ranks together, and pushed 
forward to crush the Union army before Buell's troops 
could arrive. It was a bold and soldierly movement, and 
was not expected by the people of the North ; yet every 
indication of a great battle was in the reports between 
Grant, Halleck, and Sherman. Halleck had ordered 
Buell, who commanded the Army of the Ohio, to join 
Grant ; the latter was on the road, and his advance-guard 
was expected at any hour. 



o 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE BATTLE OF SHILOH CHURCH 

N the 5 th of April Grant wrote from Savannah to 
Buell: 



Your despatch received. I will be here to meet you to- 
morrow. 

And from Pittsburg Landing Sherman wrote : 

All is quiet along my lines now. We are in the act of 
exchanging cavalry, according to your order. The enemy has 
cavalry on our front, and I think there are two regiments of 
infantry and one battery of artillery about two miles out. 

A little later Sherman sends another word : 

Your note just received. I have no doubt nothing will occur 
to-day more than some picket-firing. The enemy is saucy, but 
got the worst of it yesterday, and will not press our pickets far. 
I will not be drawn out far unless with certainty of advantage, 
and I do not apprehend anything like an attack on our position. 

With these words of Sherman to ease his mind Grant 

remained undisturbed at his headquarters at Savannah 

on the night of the 5 th. Sherman was an older man, a 

keen and experienced soldier, and could be trusted to 

keep the advance-guard. His troops were raw, but his 

own sagacity and alertness were unquestioned by his 

chief; and yet at the time Sherman was writing those 

assuring notes the entire Confederate army was encamped 

but a short distance away, ready to attack in force. 

201 



202 LIFE OF GRANT 

It was an ominous night, dark, foggy, and windless. 
Grant was in great pain from a bruised ankle. His horse 
(during a trip to the front on the evening of the 4th) had 
slipped on a smooth log, and in falling had crushed the 
general's ankle. His boot had to be cut from his foot, so 
enormously had the limb swollen, and he could not walk 
without crutches. 

He was early astir. It was Sunday morning in April, 
and nature was tuned to nothing harsher than the caw of 
the crow, the songs of the birds, and the ringing of church 
bells. The sun rose warm but veiled in fog. But while 
the general was at breakfast, through the soft, damp, 
fragrant air came a faint, far-off, jarring sound. 

" General," said Webster, his chief of staff, " that is the 
noise of cannon." 

" It sounds very much like it," said Grant, and went on 
with his breakfast, though the sound thickened. 

An orderly came in, and, saluting, said : 

" General, there is terrific firing up the river." 

By the time they had finished breakfast the earth 
shook with the distant tumult of monstrous cannon. The 
Sabbath-day slaughter had begun. 

As the general listened, Webster asked: "Where is it? 
Crump's Landing or Pittsburg?" 

" That is what I am trying to determine. I think it is 
Pittsburg. Orderly, take these horses to the boat, and 
tell the captain to fire up at once. Come, gentlemen ; it 
is time to move." 

He wrote a note to General Buell : 

Heavy firing is heard up the river, indicating plainly that an 
attack has been made upon our most advanced positions. I have 
been looking for this, but did not believe the attack could be 
made before Monday or Tuesday. This necessitates my joining 
the forces up the river instead of meeting you to-day, as I had 
contemplated. I have directed General Nelson to move to the 
river with his division. He can march to opposite Pittsburg. 

He hobbled painfully to the boat, and started up the 
river, accompanied by his staff. 

He betrayed little excitement, though the deepening 



THE BATTLE OF SHILOH CHURCH 203 

roar of the cannon seemed to portend the downfall of the 
republic ; but on his face settled that strange look which 
he had worn at Donelson — a relentless sternness which 
was resolution, not savagery. He held his cigar in his 
hand, and occasionally put it ,between his teeth, but it 
remained unlighted. His calmness was not inertness; it 
was the immobihty of perfect self-control. His staff had 
come to know these moods and to respect his silence. 

At Crump's Landing, about half-way up the river to 
Pittsburg Landing, General Lew Wallace was stationed. 
To him Grant said: "General, have your men ready to 
march at a moment's notice." 

" They are all under arms," replied Wallace. 

The roar and jar and tumult thickened, but the general 
gave no further sign of excitement till the boat neared 
the landing; then, leaning on his chief of staff, he hobbled 
to the side of his horse. As he swung into the saddle 
he seemed to forget his pain. The moment the gang- 
plank fell he was ashore. Spurring his horse till he leaped 
like a hound, he dashed away. His eagerness had found 
expression. He led his staff at reckless speed straight 
toward the heaviest firing. It was about nine o'clock in 
the morning when he ** came sailing in on his old clay- 
bank." The debarkation of the army had not been his; 
the delay had not been his ; but now that the battle was 
on, he accepted the issue, and he was the commander; 
there was no question of that in the mind of any com- 
petent observer that terrible day. The enemy had fallen 
upon Sherman's advance-line, and had driven him back 
toward the river; the defensive line still remained, but 
was very much shortened. 

He rode at once to Sherman's lines. He found Sherman 
wounded, but calm and alert. 

" How is it with you ? " asked Grant. 

" We 've about held our own," replied Sherman, " but 
it has been a heavy attack." 

" Things don't look so well on our left. I have left 
orders at Crump's Landing for Wallace's division to come 
up on your right. Look out for him." 

All day he rode the lines, exposing himself with crimi- 



204 LIFE OF GRANT 

nal recklessness to the fire, encouraging his subordinates 
by promise of reinforcements, reforming stragglers, for- 
warding ammunition, giving helpful advice and definite 
orders. Something great and admirable came out in his 
character. His coolness, his alertness, his perfect clarity 
of vision under the appaUing strain of anxiety, evidenced 
the great commander of men. Had he been a lesser man, 
or a man of nervous organization, he would have broken 
down under the responsibility. 

The battle was horrifying. Charge after charge was 
made and repulsed. Some of the ground was taken and 
retaken several times. The army was new and untried, 
and its commanders were scarcely less inexperienced. 
Lines were broken up; organization in the newer regi- 
ments disappeared ; but they fought on without barri- 
cades, men and officers alike performing desperate deeds 
of valor. 

At two o'clock Grant's face showed anxiety for the first 
time. The army was almost a confusion of brave mobs, 
difficult to command. Buell had not arrived; Wallace 
was wandering about on the road somewhere ; and many 
of the raw troops of Sherman's advance-guard, having 
fled back to the river, cowered under the bank like fright- 
ened rabbits. The unutterable fury of the conflict had 
made of them, not cowards, but awed and helpless 
animals. They had gone beyond command. The gray- 
coated men came in impulses, as though driven by some 
incomprehensible enginery of hate. They were confident 
of victory, and really outnumbered the Union troops. 
But they could not advance. They were checked, and 
slowly fell back. 

At last Wallace arrived, but too late in the day to take 
any part in the battle. Buell's men did not reach the 
field until the end of the first day's terrible fighting. 

Buell himself landed in advance of his men, and seeing 
the great body of discouraged stragglers by the river, 
asked Grant what preparations he had made for defeat. 
Grant simply said : " I have n't despaired of whipping 
them yet." 

As night came on, the Union line, crushed back close 



THE BATTLE OF SHILOH CHURCH 205 

to the river, lay down in the rain and waited for the 
dawn. Grant, though suffering great pain from his swollen 
ankle, and worn with his day's activity, set himself to the 
problem of capturing the army which he already con- 
sidered whipped. This wonderful characteristic came out 
in him : he seemed just beginning to fight. The troops 
slept on their arms beneath the tempest, but the labor of 
reforming the commands and posting the newly arrived 
forces of Wallace and Buell continued all night. " Grant 
visited each division commander, including Nelson, after 
dark, directing the new position of each, and repeating 
in person the orders for an advance at early dawn. ' At- 
tack with a heavy skirmish-line as soon as it 's light 
enough to see ; then follow up with your entire command, 
leaving no reserves.' " 

About midnight he returned to the landing, and lay 
down on the ground with his head against a tree ; and 
though drenched by the storm and suffering great physical 
pain, he did not lose heart; he confidently looked for 
victory in the morning. Toward dawn, becoming chilled, 
he moved to the porch of one of the log huts, and tried 
to rest there ; but the house was filled with wounded men, 
and their moans and cries of anguish, more unendurable 
than the storm, drove him back to the shelter of his tree. 

It was a long, long night ; but daylight came at last. 
He was again lifted into his saddle, and though lame, 
worn, covered with mud, and burdened with the mightiest 
responsibilities, his voice was calm, clear, and decisive. 

Riding along the line, he said to his aide : " See that 
every division moves up to the attack ; press the enemy 
hard the minute it is light enough to see." Conditions 
had changed ; he was now the aggressor. Buell and Wal- 
lace had given the Union forces preponderance ; the 
stragglers reformed, and all moved with the confidence 
which reinforcements gave. They were anxious to redeem 
themselves. The Confederates withstood the attack with 
marvelous skill and bravery ; though now outnumbered 
and fighting a losing battle, they withdrew in good order; 
nothing could stampede them. 

At last, late in the afternoon on Monday, the enemy's 



2o6 LIFE OF GRANT 

guns on the left became silent, but on the right the battle 
still continued in intermittent ferocity. Moments of com- 
parative silence began to intervene like lulls in a gale, 
followed by volley after volley of musketry, rapid as the 
roll of a drum, till the guns grew hot and the gunners 
weary. Each returning wave of sullen savagery seemed 
weaker, and the firing became fainter and fainter and then 
almost died away. 

The commander sat on his clay-colored war-horse, 
surrounded by his staff, looking intently in the direction 
of the firing. As the musketry began this intermittent 
action his face lighted up. The enemy was preparing to 
retreat! This was the moment for a final charge. He 
looked about him for a weapon to hurl into the retreating 
ranks of the enemy. Gathering up two or three fragments 
of regiments, he led them against the enemy's last stand. 
The line broke ; the gray-coated men fled. Shrill cheers 
arose. The battle was ended. The field of Shiloh had 
taken its place in history as one of the great battle-fields 
of the human race. 

The battle of Shiloh showed Ulysses Grant to be a 
commander of a new type. His personal habits in conflict 
were now apparent to all his staff. He did not shout, 
vituperate, or rush aimlessly to and fro. He had no vin- 
dictiveness. While other officers in the heat of battle 
swore and uttered ferocious cries. Grant voiced all his 
commands in plain Anglo-Saxon speech, without oaths 
or abridgment. His anxiety and intensity of mental action 
never passed beyond his perfect control. He fought best 
and thought best when pushed hard. 

He went into the battle of Shiloh under the most 
annoying, uncertain, and depressing circumstances without 
losing his temper and without once becoming confused or 
vindictive. His endurance was marvelous. Neither noise 
nor confusion of line, neither rush of stampeding troops, 
nor feebleness of dilatory commanders, nor physical pain, 
could weaken or affright him. He displayed the high 
courage which assumes responsibility, and the mind which 
executes plans in the face of apparent defeat. 



THE BATTLE OF SHILOH CHURCH 20/ 

A man of singular gentleness, he had displayed the 
faculty which enables a man to consider soldiers en masse, 
to look over and beyond the destruction of human life in 
battle to the end for which the battle is fought. Unwill- 
ing to harm any living thing himself, he had the resolution 
to send columns of men into battle calmly and without 
hesitation. Without this constitution of mind no great 
commander can succeed. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 

THE battle of Shiloh was a great victory, but it did 
not ring over the North with the same joyous clamor 
which followed upon Donelson. The holiday element had 
passed out of the war. Optimists had said, " Donelson 
ends it in the West " ; and yet another battle had followed, 
so much greater, so much more horrible in the destruction 
of human life, that Donelson, in its turn, became a small 
affair, and even the most hopeful saw other carnage in 
prospect. 

There was an end of talk about the " boastful Southron." 
It was apparent that he could fight under leadership such 
as he had in Albert Sidney Johnston. The two sections 
had met in forces beyond anything ever seen in the 
Revolutionary War, or in the wars of 1812 and with 
Mexico. The desolation of homes was terrible. Long 
columns of the dead filled the newspapers, and long trains 
wound and jolted their slow way to the North and to the 
South, carrying the wounded to their homes. 

The nation was appalled, and naturally a large part of 
the bitterness and hate of war fell upon Grant. He had 
risen so suddenly to national fame that his private life and 
character were dark with mystery. Few knew how kind 
and gentle he really was, and a tumult of abuse arose. 
He was execrated as a man careless of human lives. He 
was accused of negligencp and drunkenness, and of being 
unjustifiably off the field of battle. McClernand wrote 
to the President, claiming the honors, and reflecting on 

208 



FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 209 

Other commanders ; General Buell, stung by charges of 
being " designedly slow," retorted with insinuations of 
Grant's inefficiency, and drew dolorous pictures of the 
Union army, which he had saved from flight ; and finally 
Halleck, taking from a telegram Grant's warm and gener- 
ous praise of Sherman, embodied it in a message to Secre- 
tary of War Stanton (not mentioning Grant's name), asking 
for Sherman's promotion, which had the effect of hinting 
at Grant's demoralization and failure. 
To this Stanton replied : 

The President desires to know why you have made no official 
report, and whether any neglect or misconduct of General Grant 
or any other officer contributed to the sad casualties that befell 
our forces on Sunday. 

Again Halleck evaded the issue by not mentioning 
Grant, though the question called for it, saying : 

The casualties were due in part to the bad conduct of officers 
utterly unfit for their places, and in part to the numbers and 
bravery of the enemy. I prefer to express no opinion in regard 
to the misconduct of individuals till I receive reports of com- 
manders of divisions. 

Great pressure was at once brought to bear on the 
President to have Grant relieved from duty. Lincoln 
listened patiently to all that men had to say, pro and con ; 
then, with a long sigh, he said : " I can't spare Grant ; he 
fights! " 

To Colonel J. S. Stewart Colonel S. D, Webster of 
Grant's staff wrote, September 4, 1872, to deny a slander: 

I breakfasted with General Grant. I went on board the boat, 
and rode with him to the field about half-past eight in the morn- 
ing. I was with him all day. 1 lay down with him on a small 
parcel of hay which the quartermaster put down to keep us out 
of the mud, in the rear of the artillery-line to the left. He was 
perfectly sober and self-possessed during the day and the entire 
battle. No one claimed that he was drunk. 

S. D. Webster. 



210 LIFE OF GRANT 

The battle of Shiloh may be said, therefore, to have 
divided the country into two distinct camps— those who 
considered General Grant no soldier, and those who con- 
sidered him the great warrior of the West. The poor 
farmer of the Gravois had become an issue. Stocks in 
London rose and cotton went down with his day's doings; 
and this immense achievement was the result of nine 
months' service in the field. 

But Halleck, " cautiously energetic one," determined 
to take the field in person. One week after the battle he 
arrived, holding carte blanche from the Secretary of War. 
He congratulated Generals Grant and Buell, and their 
armies, and left them in their respective commands, and 
called for reinforcements. They came, —the North was just 
beginning to understand the necessities of the case, — 
and on the 22d Commander Halleck unrolled his great 
army. It was a mighty host, and the w^hole nation waited 
to see what would happen. Never had an American 
soldier such a chance. Mightiest results were looked for. 

Nothing happened! He lay there with his splendid 
army, fearing attack. There was not a formidably forti- 
fied city in the whole West, and all the forces opposed 
could not have exceeded sixty thousand bayonets, while 
Halleck was master of nearly one hundred and twenty 
thousand resolute Western soldiers, men enough to march 
to the Gulf, taking all before them. The Confederates 
looked on in wonder at this superb army inching along 
behind breastworks. Halleck's orders to his subordinates 
were to "avoid any general engagement" until reinforce- 
ments should arrive, though his advance column was 
finding but feeble resistance, and reported several times 
the belief that the enemy was evacuating Corinth. " The 
movement was a siege from start to close." 

Meanwhile General Grant was little more than a spectator. 
Though nominallv second in command, he had in reality 
almost no command at all. He was forced to trail after 
Halleck in the most humiliating of positions. Every 
suggestion he made to his chief was treated with con- 
tempt. The stafT-officers, taking their cue from Halleck, 
turned their backs when Grant came near. Orders to his 



FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 211 

troops were sent over his head, and movements were 
ordered in his department without consulting him or even 
notifying him. These things became unendurable at last, 
and in a letter stating his position he asked to be relieved 
from duty altogether, or to have his command defined. 

To this Halleck replied in diplomatic and soothing 
words, saying: 

You have precisely the position to which your rank entitles 
you. You certainly will not suspect me of any intention to injure 
your feelings or do you any injustice ; if so, you will eventually 
change your mind on the subject. For the last three months I 
have done everything in my power to ward off the attacks which 
were made upon you. If you believe me your friend, you will 
not require explanations ; if not, explanadons on my part would 
be of little avail. 

On its face this letter seems fair, and yet under its 
smooth phrases lies the fact that Grant was subjected to 
daily humiliations. The victor of Donelson and Shiloh was 
second in command to a chief who contemptuously cut 
short all his suggestions, who ordered his troops from his 
corps without notifying him, and this not in an emergency, 
but contemptuously, as in the case of detaching General 
Lew Wallace for movement toward Bolivar. 

At about this time Sherman, who deeply sympathized 
with Grant, was told casually by Halleck that Grant 
was going away. He immediately ordered a horse and 
rode over to Grant's headquarters. 

As he came near he was amazed to see the tents struck, 
and men at work packing up. Grant was sitting on a log 
near by, smoking, as usual. 

"What the devil 's the meaning of all this?" asked 
Sherman, in his abrupt way. 

Grant smiled joyously. " I 'm going to leave." 

"What! " Sherman fairly shouted. 

" Yes ; I have leave to go to Washington, and I 'm 
going." 

"Good God Almighty! Grant, are j'ou crazy? You 
can't leave this Western army; it 's yours. You know 
the men, and the men know you. D it, man," cried 



212 LIFE OF GRANT 

the rough old fellow, lifting his fist, " don't you know 
when you are well off?" 

Grant was deeply impressed with Sherman's earnest- 
ness, but significantly repHed : 

"You know my position here under Halleck?" 

" I know all about that. But you stay right here, Hal- 
leck is going East pretty soon, and then things will 
straighten out here." 

Grant mused a moment, and then ordered : " Put up the 
tents again; I '11 stay." 

It is hardly more than twenty miles from Pittsburg 
Landing to Corinth. It took Halleck six weeks to come 
within striking distance of the enemy's outworks. Grant 
was driven nearly to desperation by the snail's pace of the 
splendid army which should have been his, and which he 
felt able to lead. 

" I may be wrong," he said to his staff, " but I believe 
in an aggressive campaign. If I were in command I 
would push on and win." 

For six weeks, in hesitating timidity, General Halleck 
held his immense host in check before a retreating foe. 
When the truth could be no longer concealed, he ordered 
an advance on Corinth, and found an empty city! The 
whole army smiled. "Old Brains" had been outfaced 
by wooden guns. Halleck concealed his stupefaction and 
chagrin by a brave show of orders and telegrams, but the 
truth could not be suppressed. The soldiers knew he had 
been fooled, and they did not hesitate to put their opinions 
in their home letters. 

On the loth of June he restored Grant, Buell, and Pope 
to their separate commands. Grant, seizing the oppor- 
tunity to e-cape from his irksome position, asked to be 
allowed to make his headquarters in Memphis, which had 
fallen into Union hands upon the evacuation of Corinth. 
Halleck consented, and in such wise Grant " went into 
honorable retirement." He still continued to play second 
fiddle to Halleck, but was free from daily humiliation at 
the hands of headquarters supernumeraries. The people 
of Memphis recall his stay there with expressions of good 



FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 2 13 

will. He ruled wisely and well, and in the midst of 
cotton speculators and measureless corruption he re- 
mained poor. 

The shift which Sherman predicted took place. Lin- 
coln, sorely disappointed with operations in the East, 
looked toward Halleck. Lee had forced McClellan back 
to the James River. There was a feeling of great inse- 
curity at Washington, and on the 1 0th of July Halleck 
received an order to proceed to the capital. Thereupon 
he telegraphed Grant at Memphis : " You will immedi- 
ately repair to this place and report to these head- 
quarters." 

Grant asked if he should bring his staff. 
Halleck curtly replied, " You can do as you please, but 
Corinth will be your headquarters," and made no other 
explanation. 

On the 1 2th he wired Stanton: "In leaving this de- 
partment, shall I relinquish the command to next in 
rank, or will the President designate who is to be the 
commander?" 

All this was quite open and candid, but he secretly 
offered the command of the department to Colonel Robert 
Allen, his quartermaster. 

Colonel Allen was properly astonished, and decHned, 
saying, " I have not rank." 

Halleck replied: " That can easily be obtained." 
Colonel Allen, with fine common sense, again declined 
to consider the matter, saying he doubted the expediency 
of such a step. " Identified as I am with enormous 
expenditures of my department, it is impracticable to 
relieve me at this time." 

No doubt Grant would have served willingly under 
Allen, for he held him in high regard, and kept in memory 
his kindness to him when he was in want in San Francisco 
in 1854; but the Secretary of War ordered Halleck to 
turn the command over to the next in rank, and that 
ended the matter so far as Halleck was concerned. 

Grant was once more in command of his department, 
but under discouraging conditions. Buell's army had 



214 



LIFE OF GRANT 



returned to Kentucky, and his own forces were heavily- 
depleted. His name was no longer in men's mouths. 
All eyes were turned upon Buell's army, and upon Hal- 
leck and the Army of the Potomac. Grant was simply 
another general who had gone up like a rocket and had 
fallen a charred stick. He might be a useful man; he 
might do garrison duty ; but he was no longer the man 
expected, the great commander. During July and August 
he could do nothing more than guard his lines. He held 
his command but insecurely, and felt that he might be 
removed at any moment. He was ordered to be in readi- 
ness to reinforce Buell, and had no freedom of action, 
though exposed at any time to an attack on his weakened 
lines. 

This was a gloomy and anxious time, and the general's 
old habit threatened to seize upon him again. His ner- 
vous organization was such that inactivity and depression 
of spirits weakened him to the power of alcoholic stimu- 
lants. But his loyal wife came down and helped him bear 
his disappointment. Through weeks of weary waiting he 
endured in silence, watching Generals Price and Van Dorn, 
knowing well he had but inadequate movable force to send 
against an enemy. But when the enemy attacked in 
September, he fought skilfully, and won the battle of luka. 
A little later, seeing the Union army weakened still further 
by the transfer of General Thomas to Buell's command. 
General Van Dorn assaulted Corinth. Grant's head- 
quarters were at Jackson, Tennessee, at this time, but he 
directed the battle, which was a marked and decisive 
defeat of the Confederates. 

Again, at the first opportunity, he had cheered the 
nation with victories. Patriots began to recall that Grant 
was the victor of Donelson and Shiloh. 

The Mississippi campaign began once more to seem 
important, and Halleck formally assigned to Grant the 
command of the department which he had been holding 
thus far by sufferance. Encouraged by this. Grant sug- 
gested a forward movement. With Sherman command- 
ing his right wing, C. S. Hamilton (an old classmate) his 
center, and young James B. McPherson his left, he began 



FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 215 

to push down the Mississippi Central Railway upon 
Oxford and Grenada, with design to meet and destroy 
the rebel army before it could retire into Vicksburg. 

He was encouraged, but by no means at ease. In a 
letter to his sister, written early in December from Oxford, 
he said : 

I have a big army in front of me [General Pemberton was in 
command], as well as bad roads. I shall probably give a good 
account of myself, notwithstanding all obstacles. My plans are 
all complete for weeks to come, and I hope to have them all 
work out just as planned. For a conscientious person, and I 
profess to be one, this is a most slavish life. I am envied by 
ambitious persons; but I, in turn, envy the person who can 
transact hi- daily business and retire to a quiet home without 
the feeling of responsibility for the morrow. Taking my whole 
department, there are an immense number of lives staked upon 
my judgment and acts. I am extended /wiv like a peninsula into 
an enemy's country, with a large army depending for their daily 
bread upon keeping open a line of railroad running 190 miles 
through an enemfs country, or, at least, through a territory occu- 
pied by a people terribly embittered and hostile to us. With 
all this, I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right 
and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of 
country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity 
them and the nadon dependent on such for its existence. I am 
thankful, however, that, though such people make a great noise, 
the masses are not like them. 

Among many other causes of worriment, he had General 
McClernand, who reappeared on the horizon at this time. 
He had secured a leave of absence, and had visited Presi- 
dent Lincoln, appealing for permission to organize an 
independent command to proceed upon Vicksburg by 
way of the river. He had been restive under Grant's 
command from the beginning, and considered himself the 
man best entitled to command the Army of the Missis- 
sippi. He had ignored General Grant in every possible 
way, making reports to the War Department and to 
Lincoln. After the battle of Shiloh he began to plan 
for a special command. Through his influence with Lin- 



2i6 LIFE OF GRANT 

coin, he had finally obtained a very curious " confidential " 
order, which read thus : 

War Department, Washington City, 

October 21, 1862. 

Ordered that Major-General McClernand be, and he is, 

directed to proceed to the States of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, 

to organize the troops remaining in those States, and to be raised 

by voluntary or by draft, and forward them with all despatch to 

Memphis or Cairo or such other points as may hereafter be 

designated by the general-in-chief, to the end that, when a 

sufficient force not required by the operations of General Grant's 

command shall be raised, an expedition may be organized, under 

General McClernand's command, against Vicksburg, and to 

clear the Mississippi River and open navigation to New Orleans. 

The forces so organized will remain subject to the designation 

of the general-in-chief, and be employed according to such 

exigencies as the service, in his judgment, may require. 

Edwin M. Stanton, 
Secretary of War. 

With this order (which he could not have closely read) 
McClernand went forth in exultation to raise an army for 
himself. As he understood it, this gave him a position 
equal, if not superior, to Grant, and he saw Napoleonic 
glory awaiting his destruction of Vicksburg. He was a 
splendid recruiting officer; that should be cheerfully ad- 
mitted. He was in his element when making patriotic 
appeals for volunteers, and, to his high honor be it said, 
he raised an army of forty thousand men in an incredibly 
short time, and by the ist of December was prepared to 
follow them and move upon Vicksburg. 

Grant distrusted McClernand, and probably disliked 
him, though he had never given the other any per- 
sonal cause of off'ense. Hearing of McClernand's pro- 
jected movement (through a letter from Admiral Porter), 
Grant set out for Cairo to see Porter. He arrived just as 
the admiral was about to join in a banquet on the quarter- 
master's boat. No one recognized the general at first. 
He was dressed in citizen's clothes, and was travel-worn 
and grim of face. 



FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 217 

He was hungry and tired, but refused a seat at the 
table. He called Porter aside, and asked abruptly : 
"What is all this about McClernand ? " 

Porter explained that he had seen Lincoln in Washing- 
ton, and that Lincoln had said to him : " I have a greater 
general now than either Grant or Sherman. I have com- 
missioned McClernand to raise an army and capture Vicks- 
burg by way of the Mississippi." 

Grant listened in perfect silence till he had the whole 
story ; then he asked with imperative suddenness : " When 
can you move, and what force have you? " 

The admiral named the strength of his flotilla, and said : 
" I can move to-morrow." 

"Very well," said the general; " I will leave you now, 
and write at once to Sherman to have thirty thousand 
infantry and artillery embarked in transports, ready to 
start for Vicksburg the moment you get to Memphis. I 
will return to Holly Springs to-night, and will start with 
a large force for Grenada as soon as I can get off. General 
Joe Johnston is near Vicksburg with forty thousand men, 
besides the garrison of the place under General Pember- 
ton. When Johnston hears I am marching on Grenada, 
he will come from Vicksburg to meet me and check my 
advance. I will hold him at Grenada while you and 
Sherman push down the Mississippi and make a landing 
somewhere near the Yazoo. The garrison at Vicksburg 
will be small, and Sherman will have no difficulty in get- 
ting inside the works. When that is done, I will force 
Johnston out of Grenada, and, as he falls back from Vicks- 
burg, will follow him up with a superior force." 

Thus in less than half an hour Grant unfolded his plan 
of campaign involving the transportation of more than one 
hundred thousand men. He refused to eat or drink or 
sleep, but started immediately upon his return. 

All this has deep significance. Grant's department iV. 
this time extended only to the eastern bank of the Missi.^ • 
sippi River. He had no command in Arkansas, while 
Vicksburg, the objective point, was in his department. In 
his mind, McClernand was not the proper man to lead an 
independent command in his department. It was neces- 



2i8 LIFE OF GRANT 

sary, also, to save Sherman from subordination to a polit- 
ical general, and it was Grant's intention to move on 
Vicksburg in such wise that Sherman should have the 
honor of its capture before McClernand arrived. 

As a matter of fact, the "confidential order" did not 
give an independent command. Its phrases were adroit. 
As the troops began to assemble at Memphis they were 
sent to Grant and to Sherman, without regard to orders 
from McClernand ; and when he complained of this, Stan- 
ton informed him that the operations of his forces, being 
in General Grant's department, were under the general 
direction of that officer. 

Grant returned at once to headquarters, and made prep- 
arations to carry out his part of the plan of an assault on 
Vicksburg. On the i8th of December he received impor- 
tant orders from Washington, and was ready to move. 
He was seated at headquarters, next day, when Colonel 
Dickey, an officer of the cavalry, rode up and reported. 
He had been sent out with express orders to watch a 
threatening force under command of General Van Dorn, 
and to never leave the Confederate flank for a single hour. 
He arrived covered with mud, and as soon as the general 
set eyes on him he knew something was wrong. 

He rose abruptly, and without a word of greeting 
brusquely asked: "Where is Van Dorn?" 

Dickey replied : " I left him at Pontotoc. He was 
moving northward with a strong force. The negroes 
said — " 

Grant wheeled on his heel, sat down at his desk, and 
began writing orders with great swiftness, addressed to 
all his post commanders, bidding them be in readiness 
for attack, to call in all troops, and to make every effort to 
strengthen their posts. He was profoundly alarmed. He 
knew Van Dorn meant to strike some of his garrisons, 
and was especially uneasy about Holly Springs, which 
was his secondary base of supplies. Colonel Murphy 
was in command at Holly Springs, and the general dis- 
trusted him. 

Colonel Murphy received the general's orders, but de- 
layed putting thera >oto effect that afternoon; and that 



FROM SHILOH TO MILLIKEN'S BEND 219 

night the garrison at Holly Springs was captured and a 
million dollars' worth of stores destroyed. All commu- 
nications were cut, and Grant's army was for several 
days isolated in the enemy's country, and was forced to 
live off of the products of the land. For all these con- 
siderations Grant was forced to fall back to Holly Springs 
without being able to carry out his plan of cooperation 
with Sherman. 

This was his first retreat, and he felt deeply grieved and 
humiliated thereat. He had a peculiar superstition about 
retracing his steps, and to be forced out of position by a 
smaller force was a peculiar mortification. At that time 
he had no realization of the ease with which an army of 
thirty thousand men could subsist in an enemy's country, 
and it seemed impossible for him to follow out his original 
plan. These two weeks of foraging taught him a needed 
lesson. He was astonished at the ease with which the 
army fed itself. 

Meanwhile Sherman, not knowing what had happened 
to his chief, had debarked at Chickasaw Bayou, just above 
Vicksburg, according to plan. After listening anxiously 
for the sound of Grant's cannon to the east, he determined 
to assault ; and on the twenty-ninth day of December he 
made a desperate attempt to carry Chickasaw Bluffs. He 
failed, for the reason that Grant's retreat had enabled 
Pemberton to withdraw his forces from the railway and 
with them reinforce the troops at Chickasaw Bluffs. Sher- 
man's men charged again and again, but fell back at last, 
with great loss of life. 

McClernand, in the North, hearing of Sherman's expedi- 
tion, cried out in hurried telegrams to Lincoln, saying, " I 
believe I am being superseded," and pushed rapidly for 
the front. He arrived at Sherman's headquarters the 
day after the assault on Chickasaw Bluffs, and at once 
took command, thus adding to Sherman's chagrin and 
humiliation. 

At about this time General McPherson wrote to Grant, 
advising him to take command of the river expedition in 
person. " It is the great feature of the campaign," wrote 
the loyal young officer, " and its execution rightfully be- 



220 • LIFE OF GRANT 

longs to you." And Halleck, seeing that it was a matter 
of choice between a regular and a " mustang," set General 
Grant free of all fear of McClernand's interference by an 
order : " You are hereby authorized to relieve General 
McClernand from command of the expedition against 
Vicksburg, giving it to the next in rank, or taking it 
yourself." 

Grant, distrusting McClernand, and wishing to save 
Sherman from further humiliation, and being influenced 
also by the letter of young General McPherson, replied : 
" I will take command in person." 



CHAPTER XXX 

GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 

BUT all these discussions and harassrnents had wasted 
the golden moments. From Donelson the army 
should have marched at once on Corinth and on down 
the valley upon Vicksburg before it could be reinforced 
or fortified. Halleck's delay before Shiloh, his six weeks' 
siege of the flags and wooden guns of Corinth, his long 
wait after its capture, the dispersion of the great army, 
his own recall to Washington, the smallness of Grant's 
command, the controversy with McClernand — all these 
things had held aff'airs in check, and had given the South- 
ern leaders time to recover, and to reinforce and fortify 
Vicksburg, which was plainly the next great battle-point ; 
and now a winter of enormous rains was upon the land, 
the troops were mainly raw and the army unorganized, 
and it was late in January before Grant was able to put 
himself personally upon the spot to see what could be 
done. 

With his arrival began one of the most extraordinary 
beleaguerments in the history of warfare. There were 
two roads to Vicksburg, one by way of the railway, the 
other by way of the river. The river had been Grant's 
ciioice, but circumstances had forced a trial of the inland 
route. He had long perceived, as every thinking soldier 
had, that Vicksburg was the gate which shut the Missis- 
sippi. It was of enormous importance to the Confederacy. 
After Columbus and Memphis, it occupied the only 
point of high land close to the river-bank for hundreds of 
miles. At or near the city of Vicksburg, and extending 

221 



222 LIFE OF GRANT 

some miles to the south, a line of low hills of glacial drift 
jutted upon the river, making the site a natural fortress. 
Upon these heights heavy batteries were planted. 

Another element of great strength was in the river, which 
in those days made a big graceful curve, in shape like an 
ox-bow, so that to run the batteries the Northern gun- 
boats must pass twice within range, once on the outer 
curve, and again, at closer gunshot, on the inner bow. A 
third and final and more formidable condition than all 
aided to make the siege of the city hopeless. There was 
a prodigious freshet upon the land, and all the low-lying 
country, through which the river flows (at high water) as 
in a mighty aqueduct above the level of the farms, was 
flooded, and Grant's soldiers had no place to pitch their 
tents, save upon the narrow levees along the river's edge. 
No greater problem of warfare ever faced an American 
soldier. 

Grant did not underestimate its difficulty. There were 
but two ways to attack — from the north, with the Yazoo 
River as base of action, or to get below the city and attack 
from the south. He sent an expedition at once to explore 
a passage to the Yazoo through the bayous of the eastern 
bank, and set himself to consider the problem of getting 
below by way of the west. 

The difficulties in way of this plan were at the moment 
insurmountable. He could neither march his men down 
the western bank nor go in boats. If he should find pas- 
sage for the army, and should reach a safe point below 
Vicksburg, he would still be on the western shore, and 
without means to ferry his troops, and without supplies ; 
and to every suggestion about running the batteries with 
transports arose the picture of those miles of cannon hurl- 
ing their shells upon the frail woodwork of the unprotected 
vessels. 

He set about to find a way through the bayous to the 
west, and prodigious things were done in the way of cut- 
ting channels through the swamps and widening streams for 
the passage of gunboats. While this was going on he gave 
attention to a canal which he had found partly excavated 
upon his arrival. It had been planned by General Thomas 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 223 

Williams, in the summer of 1862, and crossed the narrow 
neck of land just out of range of the cannon. It was ex- 
pected to start a cut-ofT, which would soon deepen natu- 
rally into a broad stream through which the boats might 
pass. Grant, in a letter of the time, said : " I consider it 
of little practical use, if completed " ; but he allowed the 
work to go on, thinking it better for the soldiers to be 
occupied. He had almost as Httle faith in the bayou route 
to the west. In reality he had settled upon the plan of 
marching his men overland as soon as the water subsided, 
and afterward to run the batteries with gunboats and 
transports. These weeks of waiting tested his marvelous 
patience sorely. 

He was on trial again. The North, in its anxiety and 
peril, was fickle. As the weeks went by it began again 
to grumble, and finally to cry out. The mutter of criti- 
cism swelled to a roar as February and March went by. 
The soldiers were said to be dying like sheep in the 
trenches or useless canals. The cost of keeping such an 
army idle was constantly harped upon, and immense pres- 
sure was again brought to bear upon Lincoln to remove 
Grant from command. Disappointed tradesmen, jealous 
officers, copperheads, and non-combatants alike joined 
in the howl against him. McClernand wrote an impas- 
sioned letter to Governor Yates, asking him to join with 
the governors of Iowa and Indiana in demanding a com- 
petent commander — himself, for example. 

Many of Grant's friends deserted him and added their 
voices to the clamor of criticism. Those who had shouted 
largest professions after Donelson and Shiloh now has- 
tened to apologize, like Peter, declaring they had never 
lifted up their caps for him. 

In an interview, Lincoln said: "Even Washburne has 
deserted Grant." And at last Lincoln himself became 
so doubtful of Grant's character and ability that he con- 
sented to allow the Secretary of War to send Charles A. 
Dana (formerly a writer on the " Tribune," and a friend 
of the Secretary of War) to the front, to report the condi- 
tion of the army, and to study the relations between Grant 
and McClernand; and later General Lorenzo Thomas 



224 



LIFE OF GRANT 



arrived at Commodore Porter's headquarters with an 
order relieving Grant, if he should find it necessary. 
Porter told General Thomas that if the news got out 
the " boys " would tar and feather him, and for various 
reasons the order never saw the hght. 

Halleck, however, stood manfully by Grant (as the 
official records show), making no complaints ; to the con- 
trary, he wrote very stimulating letters. 

The eyes and hopes of the whole country are now directed 
to your army. In my opinion, the opening of the Mississippi 
River will be more advantage to us than the capturing of forty 
Richmonds. We shall omit nothing which we can do to assist 
you. 

Grant betrayed his anxiety, but he did not express 
doubt or irritation. He knew he could do the work. He 
never boasted, never asked favors, and never answered 
charges. When he communicated with Lincoln or Stan- 
ton, it was officially. 

The attempt by way of the Yazoo was a complete 
failure, and the passage to the west by way of Lake 
Providence was also a failure, while the ceaseless rains 
and floods still prevented any successful venture in the 
way of crossing the land on the west side of the river. 
The canal, too, was a failure — not because it started 
wrong, — that is to say, in an eddy, — but because the river 
was higher than the land, and the water spread out over 
the low ground and had no cutting power. There was 
nothing to do but wait for the waters to subside. 

His plan was now mature. As soon as the roads 
emerged from the water he intended to run the batteries 
with gunboats and transports, marching his troops across 
the land meanwhile to a point below Vicksburg, and there, 
by means of the boats, transport a division across the river, 
and storm Grand Gulf, the enemy's first outpost to the 
south. Thence, after cooperating with Banks in the cap- 
ture of Port Hudson, it was his purpose to swing by a 
mighty half-wheel to the rear of Vicksburg, cutting off" 
supplies from central Mississippi, and capturing General 
Pemberton's army. 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 22$ 

He had all to gain and little to lose in this bold plan, 
which he first mentioned to Porter and Sherman. Porter 
agreed, and was ready to move ; so, indeed, was McCler- 
nand ; but the audacity of the campaign alarmed the other 
officers. Sherman did not believe in it, and suggested 
other plans. The boats would not live a minute under 
the guns, he said ; and when they were below, Vv^hat then? 
They would be cut off from supplies and reinforcements. 
He finally sent a letter with a counter-suggestion to Grant, 
asking him to read it carefully. Partly because of Sher- 
man's skepticism, and partly out of regard for McCler- 
nand's superb work in raising recruits, Grant gave to 
McClernand augmented command, and sent him in 
advance by way of a levee which ran from Milliken's 
Bend to Carthage. Mr. Dana uttered a protest against 
this, and was supported in his objection by Admiral 
Porter and by nearly all the officers of the army and navy, 
for there seemed to be general lack of confidence in the 
" political general." But Grant was firm in his desire to 
allow McClernand as much of command as he safely could. 
Porter states that at a meeting of the officers on board his 
flag-ship, the night before his attempt to run the batteries, 
all the officers argued against it. Grant listened for the 
last time to all they had to say, then said : " I remain of 
the .same mind. Be prepared to move." 

The running of the batteries took place on the i6th of 
April, and was one of the most dramatic and splendid 
actions of the war. The night was dark and perfectly 
still when brave Admiral Porter, on his flag-ship Benton, 
dropped soundlessly into the current. Each boat was 
protected as well as possible by bales of cotton, and had 
no lights except small guiding lamps astern. The other 
boats were ordered to follow at intervals of twenty min- 
utes. Grant and his staff occupied a transport anchored 
in the middle of the river as far down as it was safe 
to go. 

For a little time the silence of the beautiful night re- 
mained unbroken. The hush was painful in its foreboding 
intensity. Along the four miles of battery-planted heights 
there was no sound or light to indicate the wakefulness of 



226 LIFE OF GRANT 

the gunners; but they were awake! Suddenly a flame 
broke from one of the lower batteries ; a watch-dog cannon 
had sounded the warning. Then a rocket rose in the air 
with a shriek. The alarm was taken up, and each grim 
monster had his word ; and from end to end of the line of 
hills, successive rosy flashes broke, and roar joined roar. 
Flames leaped forth ; bonfires flared aloft to light the river 
and betray the enemy to the gunners. Then the gun- 
boats awoke, and from their sullenly silent hulks answer- 
ing lightnings streamed upward, and the whole fleet 
became visible to the awed army and to the terrified city. 
The long-expected had happened : Grant was making his 
final attempt on Vicksburg. 

The sky above the city was red with the glare of flam- 
ing buildings on the hills, and burning boats and bales of 
cotton on the river, and the thunder of guns was incessant. 
It seemed as though every transport would be sunk be- 
neath the tempest of falling shot. 

But the tumult died out at last. The gunboats swept 
on out of reach. The flames on the land sank to smol- 
dering coals, the stillness and peace of an April night 
again settled over the river, and the frogs began timidly 
to trill once more in the marshes. 

Porter's gunboats, almost uninjured, were now below 
Vicksburg. Grant's mighty host of footmen was ready 
to follow. 

On the 20th of April, having been over the route in 
person, Grant issued orders for his army to move. These 
orders hinted of great things. " Troops will be required 
to bivouac. One tent only will be allowed each company, 
one wall-tent to each brigade headquarters, and one to 
each division headquarters. As fast as the Thirteenth 
Army-Corps advances the Seventeenth Army-Corps will 
take its place, and it, in turn, will be followed in like 
manner by the Fifteenth Army-Corps. Commanders are 
authorized and empowered to collect all beef, cattle, corn, 
and other necessary supplies in the line of march ; but 
wanton destruction of property, taking of articles useless 
for military purposes, insulting citizens, going into and 
searching houses without proper orders from division com- 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG ^2^ 

manders, are positively prohibited. All such irregularities 
must be summarily punished." 

And so, with cheers of elation, with renewed confidence 
in the " old commander," the army began to stretch and 
stream away in endless procession along the narrow and 
slippery roads on the levee-top. McPherson's troops 
followed, and Sherman kept the rear. The point of assault 
was Grand Gulf, the enemy's outpost to the south of 
Vicksburg. McClernand's corps moved first. 

Grant himself took no personal baggage, not even a 
valise, and the army soon found this out. The new men 
did not need to be told that this was no parade soldier 
who led them. He had no attendants, no imported deli- 
cacies, no special accommodations. He was spattered 
with mud, grizzled of beard, and wherever he went the 
" boys " felt a twinge of singular emotion. They had 
admired him before ; they began to love him now, and 
he became the " old man " to them. And yet, he was as 
unostentatious of his camaraderie as he was of his com- 
mand. He was his simple self in all this. He meant 
business, and spared himself not at all, and neglected no 
detail.* 

The attack on Grand Gulf failed, and Grant, ordering 
Porter to run the batteries of Grand Gulf, moved on down 
the river, and landed at a point called De Schroon's, just 
above Bruinsburg, being led to do so by information from 
a negro that a good road led inland to Port Gibson and 
Jackson from that point. Meanwhile, to keep Pemberton 

* " While I was standing by the pontoon-bridge, watching the boys cross 
the bayou, I heard some one cheering, and. looking around, saw an officer on 
horseback in a major-general's uniform. He dismounted and came over to 
the spot where I was standing. I did not know his face, but something told 
me it was Grant. He stood solid, erect, with square features, thin closed 
lips, brown hair, brown beard, both cut short and neat. He weighed appa- 
rently about one hundred and fifty pounds. He looked larger than Napoleon, 
and not so dumpy. He looked like a man in earnest. I heard him say: 
' Men, push right along; close up fast, and hurry over.' Two or three men 
mounted on mules attempted to wedge pass the soldiers on the bridge. Grant 
noticed it, and quietly said: 'Lieutenant, send those men to the rear.' 
There was no posturing for effect, no nonsense, no sentiment, no pointing to 
the pyramids, no calling the centuries to witness ; only a plain business man, 
filled with the single purpose of getting that command across the river in the 
shortest time pO'^sible." — S. H. Byers. 



228 LIFE OF GRANT 

occupied with things above, Sherman had been ordered to 
make a great show of attack on Vicksburg itself, and then 
suddenly to silence his guns and hasten to join the forces 

below. 

On the morning of the 30th of April, McClernand's 
troops and part of McPherson's command were landed on 
the east bank of the river below Vicksburg, and Grant's 
spirits rose. " I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever 
equaled since." And yet, one would say the outlook was 
not reassuring. He was " in the enemy's country, with a 
vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg between him 
and his base of supplies." He had two armies to fight, 
one intrenched at Vicksburg, the other at Jackson, less 
than four days' march to the east, with the whole of the 
Confederacy back of it. But he was again on dry ground, 
out of the terrible swamps and bayous of the flat country ; 
so much was gained. 

He hurried McClernand forward toward Port Gibson, 
to prevent the destruction of an important bridge. Parts 
of McPherson's command arrived, but still the invading 
army was small, less than twenty thousand men, with no 
pack-train, and with only two days' rations. On the 
second day the enemy was met in force, but defeated. 
Reinforcements kept arriving, and the chief was buoyant 
of spirits, although for five days he had been on short 
rations and had not removed his clothing to sleep. Grand 
Gulf, being uncovered by the battle of Port Gibson, was 
evacuated, and on May 3 Grant rode into the fortress, 
finding Porter before it with his fleet of gunboats. 

Grant now heard from General Banks, who was in 
command on the Lower Mississippi, and could not assist ; 
and abandoning all idea of cooperation with him, he cut 
loose from Grand Gulf and the river, and moved into the 
interior, determined to get between Vicksburg and its 
supplies, and to isolate it from the Confederacy. " I shall 
communicate with Grand Gulf no more," he wrote to 
Halleck, " except as it becomes necessary to send a train 
with heavy escort. You may not hear from me for several 
days." 

Again, as at Donelson, he put himself out of reach of 



.a«<»-«i;aa*i». 




U. S. Grant, age 41 years. 
Taken in 186:!, before Vicksburg. From a defective negative. 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 229 

the department's meddling. He assumed all responsibility 
for this tremendous venture. To fail would make him the 
most bitterly execrated man in the nation ; to win would 
open the Mississippi and give the whole Southwest to the 
Union. Others blustered, projected, doubted, grew vain- 
glorious. Grant took upon himself this enormous respon- 
sibility without change of manner. He rode among his 
legions, as simple in manner as any private soldier. ** The 
expression of his face was stern and care-worn, but deter- 
mined," says one who saw him. 

He rode a borrowed horse. He had no camp-chest, no 
change of clothing, and no tent. Here his splendid consti- 
tution stood him in good stead. His plain and rigorous boy- 
hood, his training at West Point, his roughing it in Mexico 
and on the coast, his farm life, all enabled him to endure 
hardship which would have broken down many young men, 
to say nothing of the enormous strain of responsibility and 
direction. He could wrap himself in a blanket and sleep 
beneath a tree, or, if it rained, he could bow his head to the 
pelting drops, ;«nd sit as patiently as an Indian, waiting 
for daylight. As for meals, he took them when and where 
he found them. Such a commander could not fail to in- 
spire the deepest feelings of respect and confidence in his 
men, although he was " plain as an old stove." It was hard 
for new troops to believe that the low-voiced man in the 
blouse and straw hat was the one center of all direction 
and command of this mighty force. " His horse, however, 
was always in full uniform. That was due to the orderly, 
no doubt." 

The next day after leaving Grand Gulf he learned, 
through Colonel Wilson, and Rawlins, his chief of staff, 
that the forces defeated by McPherson had fallen back, 
nol toward Vicksburg, but toward Jackson. He instantly 
surmised that a considerable army was concentrating in 
that direction. " Simply asking one or two questions, and 
without rising from his chair, he wrote orders which turned 
his entire army toward Jackson." 

Then, mounting his horse, he set his command in 
motion, sweeping resistlessly into the interior. This 
moment when he turned his army toward Jackson is one 



230 



LIFE OF GRANT 



of the greatest in his career. It showed the decision, 
boldness, and intrepidity of the man beyond dispute. 
Everything gave way before him, and while pigs, cattle, 
chickens, mules, forage, and other good things were caught 
and carried forward by the vacuum in the wake of his 
march, there was little pillaging and no burning. He was 
a humane invader. Perhaps in all this he was working out 
suggestions gained by his observance of Scott when he cut 
loose from Vera Cruz and started toward the mysterious 
interior of Mexico. 

Jackson was carried on the 14th. The Union flag was 
raised on the state-house, and Grant slept in the same 
room that the Confederate chief occupied the night before. 

General Johnston sent a despatch to Pemberton, which 
fell into Grant's hands, though he did not need it to tell 
him what to do. He hastened the movement of McCler- 
nand and McPherson toward Vicksburg, to head oflf John- 
ston's attempt to join Pemberton, and to meet the 
Confederate troops. The armies met in a savage battle at 
Champion's Hill, and Pemberton was forced to retire, after 
four hours' hard fighting.* 

He rapidly retreated to the Big Black River, where he 
made another feeble stand, and then withdrew into Vicks- 
burg, leaving the victorious army of Grant between him- 

* " The next time I saw him was under fire at Champion Hills. We were 
standing two files deep, bearing as patiently as we could a heavy and steady 
fire from infantry, while an occasional cannon-ball tore up the earth in our 
front. 

" ' Colonel, move your men a little by the left flank,' said a quiet though 
commanding voice. On looking around I saw Grant immediately behind us. 
He was mounted on a beautiful gray mare, and followed by several of his 
staflF. For some reason he dismounted, and most of his officers were sent to 
other parts of the field. Here was Grant under fire. He stood leaning 
quietly against his horse, smoking the stump of a cigar. His was the only 
horse near the line, and must naturally have attracted the enemy's fire. 
' What if he should be killed? ' I thought to myself. In front of us was an 
enemy, behind us and about us, and liable to overcome and crush us at any 
moment. For days we had been away from our base of supplies and march- 
ing inside the enemy's lines. What if Grant should be killed? I am sure 
every one who saw him wished him away ; but there he was, and there he 
remained, clear, calm, and immovable, with no sign of inward movement 
upon his fcitures. It was the same cool, calculating face that I had seen at 
the bridge, the same careful, h.alf-cynical face I afterward saw busied with 
the affairs of state."— S. H. Byers. 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 23 1 

self and Johnston. The game was in the bag, and Grant 
smiled in grim fashion, and closed around the city. This 
was on the nineteenth day of May. He had been on 
the road one month. 

On this day Sherman, with Grant by his side, stood on 
Haines's Bluff and looked down on the very spot whence 
his baffled army had fallen back months before. He 
turned to Grant, saying: "General, up to this minute I 
had no positive assurance of success. This," he said, " is 
the end of one of the greatest campaigns in history." 
Grant was deeply gratified, but he was not one to antici 
pate victory. 

On the 19th of May, immediately after crossing the Big 
Black, Grant ordered a preliminary assault which set the 
two armies face to face. On the 2 2d he ordered a grand 
assault. This order was a result of news of Johnston's 
advance. He was but fifty miles away, with a large army. 
To assault and win would set free a large force sufficient 
to defeat, and possibly capture, Johnston. Moreover, the 
officers and men were eager for a chance to " walk into 
Vicksburg." They believed they could storm and carry 
the works in an hour. So Grant gave the word, and 
the 22d of May will forever remain memorable as a day 
of terrible slaughter. 

The enemy occupied a series of sharp ridges in a vast 
semicircle about two miles from the city, and, to assault 
the Federals, were obliged to descend into hollows and 
charge up the steep hillsides through canebrake meshed 
with fallen trees, in the face of appalling fire. The 
men charged with exalted bravery up to the bases of 
the parapets, and in some cases were forced to lie there 
all day to avoid the enemy's guns. As night fell the 
army fell back without having carried a single redoubt. 
It was a wasting and disastrous assault, but it had this 
virtue : it convinced the soldiers that Vicksburg was to be 
taken only by determined siege, and made them patient 
of what followed. 

Grant now called upon his engineers to see what they 

could do. 
" The soil lent itself to the most elaborate trenching. It 



232 



LIFE OF GRANT 



was a huge deposit of glacial drift, and could be cut like 
cheese. Grant personally supervised this work every day, 
and his questions were always shrewd and pat. He went 
ahead alone, quietly and keenly studying every detail of 
the work." He was impatient of delay, but he showed it 
only in this careful study of progress from day to day. 

Suddenly the army disappeared. It sank beneath the 
earth, and, like some monstrous subterranean monster, ate 
its way inexorably toward the enemy's lines, as Worth's 
little band approached the Central Plaza of Monterey 
through the adobe walls of its gardens. 

The digging of trenches and the exploding of mines, 
great as they were, are now seen to have been only inci- 
dents in the besieging process under Grant's persistent 
command. He not only held Johnston at bay, but never 
halted in his inexorable advance. Foot by foot, the army 
closed round the doomed city like the torture-room of the 
Inquisition, whose walls contracted with every tick of the 
clock. 

On foot, dusty, and in plain clothes, with head droop- 
ing in thought, but with quick eyes seeing all that went 
on, the " old man " walked the ditches or stood upon the 
hills studying the situation, careless — criminally careless 
— of his person. The soldiers hardly discovered who he 
was before he was gone. He invited no cheers or salutes, 
but when they came he returned them instantly, no mat- 
ter how humble the source. 

In this period, when success seemed sure, claimants for 
the honor of originating the plan of the campaign arose, 
and the discussion raged endlessly. Men who had been 
glad to shift responsibility when the issue was in doubt 
now hastened to let the world know that it was their own 
plan. Grant never changed ; as he had attempted no shift 
of responsibility, so now he troubled himself very little 
about the claims of others. He had done a better thing 
than originate the plan of campaign: he had executed it. 

By the 1st of July the two armies were within pitch- 
and-toss distance of each other. A miehtv host had 
turned moles. By day all was solitary. The heaps of 
red earth alone gave indication of activity. No living 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 233 

thing moved over the battle-ground ; yet fifty thousand 
men were there, ready to rise and fly at each other at a 
word from the "old commander." At night low words, 
ghostly whispers, and subdued noises ran up and down 
the advance-lines, as the blue-coated sappers and miners 
pushed forward some trench, or some weary, thirsty 
file in a rifle-pit gave place to a relief. Occasionally 
out of the blank darkness a rebel gun would crack, to be 
answered by a score of Union rifles aimed at the rosy 
flash. A feeling grew in each army that the end was 
near. 

Humorous conversations took place on picket-line : 

"Hello, Yank! " 

"Hello, Reb! " 

"What you-uns doin' out there?" 

" Guarding thirty thousand o' you prisoners, and makin' 
you board yourselves." 

"When you-uns goin' to take Vicksburg?" 

" About the 4th of July. We want to celebrate and lick 
you fellers all the same day." 

On the night of the 2d the word was passed around 
that a final assault was to be made on the Fourth. The 
batteries were to open with a salute of a hundred guns in 
honor of the day, and continue till further orders. The 
advance-guard was told to let the enemy know this. A 
yell went up which attracted the enemy's attention. 

"Hello, Yank; what's up?" 

" We 're goin' to give you hell on the Fourth — orders 
just in. We 're goin' to pile right in on top o' ye." 

" What '11 we be doin' all the while? " 

" Gasping for breath. Say your prayers, Johnny! " 

This order produced vast excitement within the lines. 
The news went to Pemberton. He knew his men could 
not stand an assault such as Grant could now make. His 
lines were pierced in a score of places. He was out of 
food, out of ammunition. His men were lean, weary, and 
dispirited. He despaired of any help from Johnston. 

On the morning of the 3d of July a white flag appeared 
on the Confederate works. Again a Southern general 
asked for commissioners to arrange terms of surrender. 



234 LIFE OF GRANT 

Again Grant replied : " I have no terms other than un- 
conditional surrender," but added that the brave men 
within the works would be treated with all the respect due 
to prisoners of war. 

General Bowen, the blindfold messenger of peace, asked 
Grant to meet General Pemberton between the lines ; and 
supposing this to be General Pemberton's wish, he con- 
sented, and at mid-afternoon a wondrous scene took place. 
At about 3 P. M. General Grant rode forward to the 
extreme Union trenches, dismounted, and walked calmly 
and slowly toward the center of the lines. At about the 
same time General Pemberton left his lines, and, accom- 
panied by General Bowen and several of his staff, advanced 
to meet Grant. 

Then from the hitherto silent, motionless, ridged, and 
ravaged hills grimy heads and dusty shoulders rose, till 
every embankment bristled with bayonets. It was as if, 
at some unheard signal, an army of gnomes had suddenly 
risen from their secret runways. The underground sud- 
denly became of the open air. The inexorable burrowing 
of the Northern army ceased. 

A shiver of excitement ran over the men of both sides, 
and all eyes were fixed upon that fateful figure advancing 
toward the enemy, unexcitedly, with bent head, treading 
the ground so long traversed only by the wing of the bullet 
and the shadow of the shell. What he felt could not be 
divined by any action of his. His visage was never more 
inscrutable in its stern, calm lines. 

The man who advanced to meet him was an old comrade 
in arms — the same Pemberton, indeed, who had conveyed 
to Lieutenant Grant, at San Cosme gate, the compliments 
of General Worth. He came to this conference laboring 
under profound excitement ; but Grant was easy in man- 
ner, and greeted him as an old acquaintance, but waited 
for him to begin. There was an ..wkward silence. Grant 
waited insistently, for his understanding was that Pember- 
ton stood ready to make the first advance. Pemberton at 
last began arrogantly : 

" General Grant, I was present at the surrender of many 
fortresses in Mexico, and in all cases the enemy granted 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 235 

terms and conditions. I think my army as much entitled 
to these favors as a foreign foe." 

" All the terms I have are stated in my letter of this 
morning," Grant replied. 

Pemberton drew himself stiffly erect. " Then the con- 
ference may as well terminate, and hostilities begin." 

" Very well," replied Grant. " My army was never in 
better condition to prosecute the siege." 

Pemberton's eyes flashed. " You '11 bury a good many 
more men before you get into Vicksburg." 

This seemed to end the meeting; but General Bowen 
intervened, urging a further conference ; and while he and 
General A. J. Smith conversed, Grant and Pemberton 
also moved aside, and sat down on a bank under a low 
oak-tree. Pemberton was trembling with emotion, but 
Grant sat with bent head, one hand idly pulling up grass- 
blades. Suddenly the boom of cannon began again from 
the gunboats. 

Grant's face showed concern for the first time. He 

rose. 

" This is a mistake. I will send to Admiral Porter and 
have that stopped." 

" Oh, never mind ; let it go on," said Pemberton, con- 
temptuously. " It won't hurt anybody. The gunboats 
never hurt anybody." 

" I '11 go home and write out the terms," Grant finally 
said, as he rose to go. 

The terms were exceedingly fair. Pemberton was to 
give possession at 8 A. M., July 4; " and as soon as rolls 
are made out and paroles signed by officers and men, you 
will be allowed to march out of our lines, the officers tak- 
ing with them side-arms and clothing, and the field, staff, 
and cavalry officers one horse each. The rank and file 
will be allowed all their clothing, but no other property." 
Perhaps Grant was moved to these generous terms by the 
recollection of Scott's treatment of Santa Aiia's troops at 
Cerro Gordo. At any rate, they were criticized as being 
absurdly lenient. 

At ten o'clock on the morning of the 4th of July the 
ragged, emaciated soldiers who had defended Vicks- 



236 LIFE OF GRANT 

burg so stanchly " marched out of their intrenchments. 
With sad faces, the men of each regiment stacked their 
arms, threw down upon them knapsacks, belts, cartridges, 
and cap-pouches, and then tenderly crowned the piles with 
their faded and riddled colors." Their stained clothing 
contrasted mournfully with the blue of the Union troops. 
For forty days they had lain in the pits, eating the scan- 
tiest fare, and to many of them it was a welcome relief to 
throw down their muskets. For two hours this movement 
went on, with no derisive cry or gesture on the part of 
the victors. They knew the quaHty of these lean and tat- 
tered men, who were mistaken, but who were fighters. 

The victor allowed himself no indulgences. He was 
sleeplessly active. He had no thought of resting or going 
into summer quarters. He put McPherson in command 
of Vicksburg. He sent Sherman after Johnston the 
moment Pemberton capitulated. He despatched a mes- 
senger to Banks, asking his needs. He forwarded the 
Ninth Army-Corps to Bear Creek, to be ready to reinforce 
Sherman if it were necessary, and, providing for their 
return and movement to Kentucky, he ordered the boats 
to be in readiness to transport the troops. He ordered 
Herron's division to be in readiness to reinforce Banks. 
He brought all the remaining troops within the rebel lines, 
and gave orders to obliterate the works which the Union 
army had toiled so long to fashion, and sent his engineers 
to determine upon a shorter line, if possible, in order that 
the garrison should be small. He advised Logan that as 
soon as the rebel prisoners were out of the way he intended 
to send him to the Tensas to clear out the Confederate 
' troops there. And in the midst of this multiplex activity 
he asked Mr. Dana to inquire of General Halleck whether 
he intended him to follow his own judgment in future 
movements, or cooperate in some particular scheme of 
operations. 

His army was now 'et loose for other campaigns, and 
this the Southern leaders thoroughly understood. The 
fall of Vicksburg was a disaster. The march of Grant's 
army foreboded the downfall of the Confederacy, 

In all the correspondence of this strange conqueror 



GRANT CAPTURES VICKSBURG 237 

there is scarcely a single word of exultation, not a second 
allusion to victory, even to his wife. He fought battles 
and won victories in the design of moving to other battles 
and other victories. His plan was to whip the enemy and 
win a lasting peace. 

The Vicksburg campaign had the audacity of the com- 
mon sense in opposition to the traditional. What the 
military authorities had settled he could not do he did 
swiftly, with astounding despatch, accuracy, and coherence 
of design. He kept his own counsel, — a greater feat than 
the other, — and it added to the mystery of his movements 
and the certainty of his results. 

He shrank from no necessary hardship. He was not a 
student of books, but of life. He had acquired his wis- 
dom by experience. He had packed mules in Mexico, 
and bound grain under the August sun of Missouri, and 
hewn logs for his own cabin. He knew what men could 
endure, and how much feed a horse required for a day's 
march. His constitution and training enabled him to defy 
fevers, to eat hardtack, and to sleep where night over- 
took him, without vexation or complaint. Pestilence and 
the sea and the poisonous things of the forest, as well as 
the cannon of the enemy, he had faced with calm intre- 
pidity. It seemed as if all things stood aside to see him 
pass on to his larger life as a great commander. Belmont, 
Henry, Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg — all these were 
behind him, and he had no scar. He would not have 
been human had not some feeling of foreordination assumed 
possession of him. 

The Vicksburg campaign brought to him a full know- 
ledge of his power to command men. He became con- 
vinced of his ability to do whatever his country demanded 
of him. All that he was before Vicksburg he had been 
when he drove teams in Gravois, but his powers were 
latent. Circumstances gave him little, but they developed 
him. 

The Vicksburg campaign makes a natural division in his 
career. He was now forty-one years of age, and at his fullest 
powers of command and endurance. He had reached the 
place where he now stood — in the hght of national fame, 



238 LIFE OF GRANT 

holding the full confidence of the government— without 
money, without political influence, after years of hardship, 
disappointment, and privation. Now all opposition was 
silenced, and his detractors were overborne. He had 
placed himself among the great generals of the world, and 
the nation waited to see what the conqueror of Vicksburg 
would do next. On the 12th of October he received an 
order making him the commander-in-chief of the entire 
Western army, from the Cumberland Mountains to the 
Brazos. This placed him in command of two hundred 
thousand men. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 

WHEN the order came from the War Department 
asking Grant to proceed to Cairo, he was a cripple. 
In returning from a review of General Banks's troops at 
CarroUton, near New Orleans, the horse which he rode 
became frightened at an engine, and shied and fell, throw- 
ing the general with great violence to the ground. He 
was unconscious for some time, and was housed two weeks 
in New Orleans before he became strong enough to return 
to Vicksburg. He was still on crutches, and pale and thin, 
when he met Secretary Stanton at Louisville, and accepted 
the momentous command of all the Western armies. 

It was Sunday night when he issued his orders taking 
command, and telegraphed General Thomas to hold Chat- 
tanooga at all hazards. Thomas valiantly replied : " I will 
hold the town till we starve! 

In the words of General Thomas lay a hint of the already 
desperate situation of the Army of the Cumberland. 
General Grant, eminent practitioner, had been called to a 
severe case — a well-nigh hopeless case. The diagnosis of 
Commander-in-Chief Halleck shows this: 

" When General Buell was ordered into East Tennessee, 
in the summer of 1862, Chattanooga was comparatively 
unprotected ; but Bragg reached there before Buell, and, 
by threatening his communications, forced him to retreat 
on Nashville and Louisville. Again, after the battle of 
Perryville, General Buell was urged by the War Depart- 
ment to pursue Bragg's defeated army and drive it out 
of East Tennessee. Later, when Grant's campaign move- 

239 



240 LIFE OF GRANT 

ments on the Mississippi had drawn out of Tennessee a 
large force of the enemy, General Rosecrans was again 
urged to take advantage of the opportunity ; but he could 
not be persuaded to act in time." 

General Burnside at Knoxville had failed to cooperate 
with Rosecrans, though urged to do so several times by 
General Halleck. The final result of all this had been a 
desolating battle at Chickamauga, near Chattanooga, the 
practical weakening and downfall of Rosecrans, and the 
narrowly averted destruction of his whole army. Thomas 
had held the rebel forces at bay, standing like a rock in 
the swash of a sudden flood of retreating men, wherefore 
he was called the " Rock of Chickamauga." The army 
was practically defeated and beleaguered in its camps. 

When General Grant took command, the Union forces 
held Chattanooga and but little else south of the river, and 
the confident enemy was within rifle distance ; indeed, the 
pickets of the two armies conversed across the intervening 
space. The Confederates occupied Missionary Ridge, a 
long, low hill to the east and south, and also Lookout 
Mountain, a bold height which almost overlooked the 
town; the gray men blocked every line of communica- 
tion except one long, hilly, muddy, and well-nigh impas- 
sable road ; and, finally, they stood between Rosecrans and 
General Burnside's army at Knoxville. Cooperation was 
impossible. The army was on short rations, and the 
horses and mules were dying of starvation. The sick 
and wounded soldiers suff"ered for the necessaries of life. 
To procure fire-wood it was necessary to skirmish daily 
with the enemy's sharp-shooters. The trip of commissary 
wagons, because of weakened animals and sloughs of red 
mud, took weeks to accomplish, and the provisions spoiled 
on the way. Rosecrans and Thomas had both been haul- 
ing all their provisions over this road under such con- 
ditions. The army was practically at a standstill, and 
wasting away slowly but steadily. 

Being in possession of the main facts, General Grant 
telegraphed Thomas from Nashville : " I will leave here in 
the morning, and push through to Chattanooga as soon as 
possible. Should not large working parties be put upon 






Lontrstreet. 



Sliermaii. 



Burnside. 





Pope. 



Hancock. 





McClellan. 



Rosecrans. 



Thomas. 

Distintruished Generals who were tellow-cadets of Grant at West Point. 
From the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert Coster, 



GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 24 1 

the road between Bridgeport and Chattanooga at once? 
General Meigs suggests this, and also that depots of forage 
be established on each side of the mountain." He began 
to telegraph for information from Thomas and Burnside, 
and to make further suggestions, and took the train toward 
Chattanooga. The railway ran only to Bridgeport. 

From Bridgeport the general attempted to ride in an 
ambulance; but the pitching and tossing wrenched his 
bruised and inflamed side, and he took to his horse. The 
rain fell in floods, and the roads were well-nigh impassable, 
but he pushed grimly forward. " Soldiers bore him in 
their arms over the roughest places. At every telegraph- 
station he despatched instructions to distant subordinates, 
comprehending as if by intuition the condition and needs 
of his scattered forces. He inspired every subordinate 
with his own zeal and vigor." 

Had he been well, this ride through mud and rain would 
not have distracted his thought. As it was, he uttered no 
word of complaint; he was impatient only of the slow- 
ness of the passage. 

It was a sinister ride. The rain slashed over the land- 
scape drearily. The road was full of deep pitfalls of mud 
and water, and to the general's searching eyes every rod 
was filled with indications of the sore straits of the army. 
It was like the way to some strange, cruel, desolate hell, 
for all along it lay the gaunt and horrible carcasses of ani- 
mals killed by overwork and starvation. Mere racks of 
bones, they had staggered faithfully on till life fled, and 
then had been tumbled off" the road to rot. If the artil- 
lery-horses were as poor and weak, cannon could not be 
moved. It is no marvel that the general said : " If a re- 
treat had occurred at that time, it is not probable that 
any of the army would have reached the railroad as an 
organized body, if followed by the enemy." With firm-set 
lips he rode on, his body racked with pain, and with these 
gloomy evidences of defeat on every hand. He arrived at 
Chattanooga on the night of the 23d, and went at once to 
General Thomas's headquarters. 

General Thomas received him formally and coldly, but 
gave him a seat against the blazing fire in the wide old 



242 LIFE OF GRANT 

fireplace. There was little said on either side. Thomas 
was the older man, but the subordinate officer. He 
shared the feeling of the old regulars against Grant. He 
had practically refused the command of the Army of the 
Cumberland after Rosecrans's removal, and undoubtedly 
considered himself a logical candidate for the position of 
commander in the West, which, indeed, he was. He was 
a splendid soldier, an honorable gentleman, and a man of 
great powers; but he kept a sour silence while his lame, 
wet, tired, and hungry commander-in-chief sat dripping 
upon his hearthstone. 

Colonel J. H. Wilson, Grant's inspector-general, had 
started with him from Bridgeport, but had taken another 
road. When he arrived he found Grant and Thomas sit- 
ting gloomily by the fire, neither saying a word. There 
was a puddle of water where Grant sat, and he looked 
thin and pale, but grim and reserved. 

" General Thomas," said Wilson, " can't you get General 
Grant some dry clothing?" 

The old general started up. " Why, bless me, yes ; 
why, of course. Willard," he said to his colored man, 
" send for some dry clothes for General Grant." He then 
resumed his seat. Grant remained perfectly silent. 

Wilson spoke again : " General Thomas, General Grant 
is hungry. Can't we have something to eat? " 

Again the old general started up. " Why, certainly ; 
of course; we are to have some supper presently." 

This curious discourtesy on the part of General Thomas 
was not lost on General Grant, though he said nothing 
concerning it, either then or afterward. He put aside 
the dry clothing, but ate the food, keeping his own 
counsel. 

The next morning he was astir to study the situation. 
He found the enemy in fortified positions on every height 
to the east, south, and southwest. They not only occu- 
pied Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, but a hill 
called Orchard Knob, which rose out of the valley scarcely 
out of gunshot of the town. Practically the Army of the 
Cumberland was besieged. In company with General 
Thomas and his own staff, Grant passed down the river t' > 



GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 243 

the southwest, in order to understand the plans which 
General Thomas's engineers had originated but had not 
executed. In a short time the commander-in-chief was in 
possession of all the facts in the case, and ready to set his 
subordinates at work. 

The army felt his presence instantly. He had no hesi- 
tations. Rightly or wrongly, he went to work. Things 
began to move, as they always did when he came near. 
He found excellent plans for the relief of the army 
sketched out by Thomas and Rosecrans. He gave due 
credit for the plans, and proceeded to execute them, won- 
dering why plans so good had not been carried out before. 
He ordered all animals that could be spared to be driven 
back to forage. He started a division of troops to seize 
Rankin's Ferry, to enable General Hooker to " possess a 
road to Mountain Creek which gave water communication 
to within a few miles of Chattanooga." 

He sent a message in all haste to Sherman, whom he 
had made the commander of the Department of the Ten- 
nessee, and who was at Corinth : " Drop everything east 
of Bear Creek, and move with your entire force toward 
Stevenson until you receive further orders." He gave 
commands for transportation to enable Hooker to concen- 
trate his forces at Bridgeport, and three days after his 
arrival he wrote to Halleck : 

I arrived here on the night of the 23d, after a ride on horse- 
back of fifty miles from Bridgeport over the worst roads it is pos- 
sible to conceive of, and through a continuous drenching rain. 
It is now clear, and so long as it continues so it is barely possi- 
ble to supply this army from its present base ; but when winter 
rains set in it will be impossible. To guard against the possible 
contingency of having to abandon Chattanooga for want of sup- 
plies, every precaution is being taken. The fortifications are 
being pushed to completion, and, when done, a large part of the 
troops could be removed back near to their supplies. The troops 
at Bridgeport are engaged on the railroad to Jasper, and can 
finish it in about two weeks. . . . General Thomas had also set 
on foot, before my arrival, a plan for getting possession of the 
river from a point below Lookout Mountain. If successful, and 
I think it will be. the question of supplies will be fully settled. 



244 



LIFE OF GRANT 



Sherman, in Corinth, dropped everything, according to 
order, and began to move across country, working night 
and day on bridges, making all possible haste to join his 
chief. He knew great deeds were impending. Where 
Grant went, things moved. The troops around Chatta- 
nooga also changed their attitude from dogged endurance 
to an expectant and tense activity. They had with them 
the man who had captured Vicksburg, and while many of 
the officers and some of the men still carried the feeling of 
jealousy born at Shiloh, the great body of the army wel- 
comed his command. He came and went swiftly, silently, 
and with the air of a civilian on a tour of inspection. He 
seemed entirely unconscious that any one was looking at 
him, and apparently did not expect or welcome applaud- 
ing cheers. 

He had established his headquarters " in a pleasant 
dwelling on a little blufT overlooking the river and the 
main street. For ten days he lived on hardtack, coffee, 
desiccated vegetables, and salt meat." Not a very attrac- 
tive diet for a sick man ! But he could not complain when 
his soldiers were parching corn purloined from the rations 
of mules. But this condition did not last. Under his 
resolute action, the river was reclaimed from the enemy, 
and the " cracker line " was once more open. It had 
taken him less than ten days. The army cheered and 
chuckled with delight. The feeling of resentment against 
him as an interloper lingered only among the more bitterly 
partizan of the officers. It could not be denied but that 
the situation was changing under his active influence. 

His activity was unceasing. He had an eye to transporta- 
tion, to horseshoes for cavalry, and to forage for the mules. 
He gave suggestions concerning casemating gunboats, and 
for forwarding saddles, rations, steamers, and locomotives. 
He personally supervised the fortifications, and wrote 
most of his orders with his own hand. At one o'clock at 
night a colonel, working in the light of covered fires to lay 
a pontoon-bridge, heard the patter of a swift horse's feet, 
and a man rode up, asked a few questions, and rode away, 
giving no hint of his rank ; but the colonel saw his face as 
he passed through a ray of light from a blanketed fire: it 



GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 24S 

was General Grant. Signal-officers, spies, deserters, were 
carefully interrogated, and the army was held ready for 
action at any moment. 

In ten days after the cracker line was opened the men 
were strong, the horses were nearly able to move the 
artillery, and the general was waiting for Sherman before 
beginning his aggressive campaign. Sherman's men were 
performing prodigious things in way of bridge-building 
and road-making; but the rivers were all swollen, and the 
highways bottomless in mud. They pushed on, working 
night and day. 

General Grant had not only Chattanooga to look after : 
he commanded two hundred thousand men over a thou- 
sand miles of territory. Burnside was in Knoxville, and 
in sore distress. He, too, was beleaguered by the enemy, 
and in need of supplies. Having opened up full com- 
munications for Thomas's Army, Grant was ready " to 
force the enemy back from his position, and make Burn- 
side secure in his command." He was ready to attack the 
northern end of Missionary Ridge on the 7th, but Thomas 
reported the movement impossible by reason of the weak- 
ness and small number of his teams. Artillery could not 
be moved. 

Grant wired Burnside : " Can you hold the line for 
seven days? If so, I think the whole Tennessee Valley 
can be secured from all present danger." He was longing 
for Sherman, with his well-fed teams and his hardy and 
veteran troops. 

At last, on the 20th, Sherman, in advance of his troops, 
grizzled, gaunt, keen-eyed, and martial, met his chief; and 
in the clasp of their hands the Confederate army had cause 
to fear. Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, and Grant were 
there, and such leadership predicted great movements. 

Sherman, writing a friendly letter to McPherson on that 
day, says : 

I have been up to Chattanooga, and have seen the enemy's 
camps all around in confident security. We must disturb that 
seeming tranquillity, and the sooner the better. Grant can ride 
now, and looks cheerful. 



246 LIFE OF GRANT 

In a letter to Stanton, General David Hunter describes 
Grant at this time : 

I was received by General Grant with the greatest kindness. 
He gave me his bed, shared with me his room, gave me to ride 
his favorite horse, read to me his despatches received and sent, 
accompanied me on my reviews, and I accompanied him on all 
his excursions. In fact, I saw him almost every moment of the 
three weeks I spent in Chattanooga. 

He is a hard worker, writes his own despatches and orders, 
and does his own thinking. He is modest, quiet, never swears, 
and seldom drinks, as he only took two drinks while I was with 
him. He listens quiedy to the opinions of others, and then 
judges promptly for himself, and he is very prompt to avail him- 
self in the field of all the errors of the enemy. He is certainly a 
good judge of men, and has called round him valuable com- 
manders. Prominent as General Grant now is before the coun- 
try, these remarks of mine may appear trite and uncalled for; 
but having been ordered to inspect his command, I thought it 
not improper to add my testimony with regard to the commander. 
I will also add that I am fully convinced the change of com- 
manders was not made an hour too soon, and that if it had not 
been made just when it was, we should have been driven from 
the valley of the Tennessee, if not from the whole State. 

The " fixed and immovable condition of the Army of 
the Cumberland," which had so worried and impeded 
General Grant, now began to change. Sherman's horses 
were sent to move artillery for Thomas, whose teams were 
still hardly able to carry themselves. General Bragg, the 
Confederate chief, on the 20th sent a flag of truce into the 
Union lines, with a warning to all non-combatants to forth- 
with f^ee. Grant smiled at this bluff. He was quite pre- 
pared to consider the best that he could give. Against 
the strenuous opposition of General Longstreet, Bragg had 
weakened his lines opposite Grant in order to crush and 
capture Burnside. Longstreet was detailed to do this 
work. Grant suspected this, and on the 2 2d of Novem- 
ber, Sherman's troops being nearly in position, he issued 
his orders for a series of related and harmonious move- 
ments which involved the armies of Sherman, Hooker, and 
Thomas. 



GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 247 

Sherman was to cross the Tennessee River opposite the 
northern end of Missionary Ridge, and to threaten or hold 
the railway in Bragg's rear. Hooker was to move on the 
enemy's left from Lookout Valley to Chattanooga Valley, 
and push hard against the enemy's left, and, if possible, 
also threaten him in the rear. Thomas, with the Army 
of the Cumberland, all being ready, was ordered to attack 
the enemy's center. News had been received that Burn- 
side was attacked by Longstreet, and " the President and 
Secretary of War and General Halleck were all in an 
agony of suspense." Grant's suspense was also great; 
but his share in the preparations of the battle helped him 
to be patient. He determined to advance his center and 
secure more of the valley in which to deploy his troops. 

On the morning of the 23d, through General Thomas, 
he ordered General Gordon Granger to " throw one divi- 
sion of the Fourth Corps forward to disclose the position 
of the enemy." The preparations began. The troops were 
disposed and aligned, and at half-past eleven of a clear 
day, in full sight of the enemy, at sound of the bugle, the 
Third Division moved out in magnificent alignment, exact 
of formation, and in serried columns. Around on the 
hills lay a hostile army, and a host of comrades in blue for 
spectators, while behind on a low mound stood the man 
whose quiet words directed these momentous movements. 
Every soldier felt the eyes of the commander-in-chief 
upon him. Not a man fell out of line. The men in blue 
stepped proudly, with elastic tread, as though moving to 
a feast, and under the inscrutable mask of General Grant's 
face there must have been a thrill of deep emotion. 

Orchard Knob was the citadel of the enemy's line in- 
trenchments. Straight toward that, with feathery puffing 
rows of white smoke running up and down the Unes, the 
Union soldiers moved, majestic, unbroken of order, then 
broke at the Knob, and with a wild rush scaled and car- 
ried it. The trenches were soon won, and Orchard Knob 
became the next point of observation for General Grant. 

Meanwhile General Hooker was advancing on the right, 
and Sherman on the left. All day on the 24th, hid in the 
scarf of fog which hung over Lookout Mountain, Hooker's 



248 LIFE OF GRANT 

troops manoeuvered. All eyes were turned to watch the 
issue. General Grant, with General Thomas, occupied 
Orchard Knob. They could not see Hooker's forces in 
action, and the sound of his guns palpitated through the 
misty air. Every soldier in the army now waited tense 
and eager to know what the "old commander's" next 
orders were to be. All was quiet along the center. 

Night and the fog closed down on Lookout Mountain. 
The guns ceased, and then the whole mountain-front began 
to sparkle with camp-fires as the mists lifted. Line upon 
line of twinkling red flames showed the advancing ranks 
of the loyal troops, and Hooker reported his position 
secure. Then Grant telegraphed to Washington the good 
news. Sherman was in line ; Hooker would be on the 
morrow. With a vast relief the commander now over- 
looked his battle-line from Orchard Knob. He was ready 
for the last act of his eventful drama. 

When the light came next morning, and the Union flag 
was seen waving from the summit of Mount Lookout, a 
mighty cheer roared along the lines. To have carried that 
formidable height seemed more than prophecy of suc- 
cess. Yet Grant gave it but a glance. It was only a pre- 
paratory movement successfully carried out. It had but 
subordinate value in itself. He turned his face toward 
Sherman, whom he had ordered into action at daylight. 
Long lines of the enemy could be seen moving toward the 
northern end of the ridge to meet Sherman ; and the chief 
was anxiously watching for Hooker's advance. 

Early in the day Orchard Knob was again covered with 
spectators of high rank ; General Thomas and his staff" 
were there, and General Grant, commander of the Division 
of the Mississippi, was there ; and all the morning the 
coming and going of aides set long lines of troops in 
motion. Everywhere preparations for some great de- 
nouement were going forward. Every eye and every ear 
was now turned toward Sherman, whose faintly booming 
cannon informed the chief that battle was raging almost 
uninterruptedly. The whole mighty theater of war was 
open to view from Orchard Knob. Grant and Thomas 
were like spectators in a private box, and across the pro- 



GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 249 

scenium-arch Bragg and his staff could be seen, interested 
spectators also, and full of activity. 

Column after column of Bragg's army left the center 
and concentrated against Sherman, as Grant had planned. 
All was now ready for the advance of the center; but 
Hooker had not yet appeared against the ridge at the 
right, and Thomas was waiting his appearance. Sher- 
man, fighting desperately, wondered why things were at a 
standstill to the south ; but he knew Grant would take care 
of him, and so he fought on most resolutely. 

Grant turned to General Thomas and in his quiet way 
made suggestion : " Hooker has not come up, but I think 
you had better move, on Sherman's account." He in- 
tended this to have the force of a command. 

Thomas apparently acquiesced, but nearly an hour 
passed, Grant expecting each moment to see the move- 
ment of the troops. Since morning the divisions of Gen- 
erals Sheridan and Wood had been in line, tense and 
eager to advance. The thunder of Sherman's guns grew 
more ominously furious, and at last General Grant said : 
" Why are not our men moving? " In looking about, he 
saw General Wood, who was to lead one of the assaulting 
divisions, talking with General Thomas. " General Wood, 
why are you not moving?" asked the chief, with some 
sternness. 

" I have received no orders." 

The chief turned sharply to Thomas. 

" General Thomas, why have not my orders been carried 
out?" 

" I gave them to Granger an hour ago," said Thomas. 

" Where is he? " 

General Granger was at work superintending the firing 
of a battery, and had apparently forgotten that he had 
anything else to do. 

Grant summoned him, and said: "General Granger, if 
you will leave that battery to its captain, and attend to 
your duties, it will be better for all of us." 

This vigorous personal direction on the part of the 
commander-in-chief was needed; he should have disci- 
plined the officers before. 



250 LIFE OF GRANT 

Suddenly a cannon-shot broke from Orchard Knob ; 
then two, three, four, five, six, in measured intervals. 
Then from their trenches rose the eager, waiting soldiers, 
regiment after regiment, three lines deep and two miles 
long ; and as they rose their ranked bayonets flamed back 
the light. Bugles called faintly ; imperative voices came 
driving to the ears of the spectators; forth-shooting horse- 
men floated like shadows down the declivity and out 
toward the plain; and before the sixth cannon-shot had 
echoed its way to silence among the hills, that enormous 
and splendid array of men began to move. Bands were 
playing, bright flags fluttering, and as they marched these 
blue automatons cheered with heroic insolence. Not once 
in a thousand years may human eyes look upon such a 
scene. The hour of the day, the singular condition of the 
battle, the configuration of the ground, made the scene 
forever memorable. It was like some prodigious and 
prodigal review organized to please a jaded and idle 
despot. 

Across the flat valley the line swept, curving slightly 
here and there, but unbroken ; and before it a line of 
minute white puffing clouds of smoke told of the begin- 
ning of the battle. The enemy, leaning insolently on his 
musket, had discovered that the review was a charge. 

The artillery of the ridge broke forth in irregular clamor ; 
cannons by the score uttered their terrible voices, and the 
air was filled with the whistling, hustling, howling shells. 
Instantly Orchard Knob was deserted. Every man 
seemed to sink into the ground. The chief, seated on a 
stool, was calmly looking over the low log parapet. The 
rifle-pits at the base of the ridge whitened with musketry 
fire, and still the blue lines swept on, their pace almost 
unbroken, their flags fluttering in a curving line. 

Then from their shelter the gray-coats swarmed in im- 
mense numbers, and irregularly receded to the next line 
of defenses. There for a moment the blue line broke 
and wavered in confusion. Orders conflicted. Horsemen 
galloped along the line. Then suddenly the blue-coats 
began to move forward again, but no longer in order of 
rank. They formed now in accordance with nature's law; 



GRANT RESCUES CHATTANOOGA 25 1 

the strong and the swift came together with the colors, and 
shot ahead, as points of roam outrun across the sand the 
deep breakers behind. At the extreme point of each pro- 
jecting wave of blue a flag gHttered hke a spark of flame. 
Occasionally it halted for a moment. That meant death 
to the color-bearer; but another hand seized it, and the 
mounting wave outran its fellows to left and right; and 
behind, on the slope, flecks of blue showed where some 
nameless hero lay. The crest of the hill was now one 
continuous bellowing flame of cannon-shots and musketry, 
yet the blue wave mounted as if flung by some mysteri- 
ous enginery. 

Down on the crest of Orchard Knob, tense and white 
with excitement, the staff-officers clustered around Grant 
and Thomas. Grant's face was impassive, but his blood 
was thrilling with the conflict. He looked to the left, and 
there was Sherman, fighting for his hfe. He looked to 
the right, and Hoo4cer was advancing. At his front his 
soldiers were carrying all before them, sweeping upon the 
very tents where the general-in-chief of the hostile army 
stood. At last, as the second line of intrenchment was 
carried. Grant's blood grew hot, and he said : " Bring my 
horse; I 'm going up there." He turned to look for 
Thomas, and he was gone! He had mounted his horse, 
and was jogging back to Chattanooga to dinner. 

Once in the saddle. Grant's fixed calm, his seeming 
stolidity, vanished. He was transformed by the motion of 
the horse. Down from the height and across the plain he 
rushed, followed by his staff, eager to set his horse's feet 
on the ground so long occupied by a confident foe. As 
he rode he saw the ragged but unwavering wave of blue 
sweep over the last range of rifle-pits, and as he reached 
the hillside he saw the advance columns break over the 
dread crest and silence the guns; and when his panting 
horse brought him to the summit, he saw the enemy in 
wild flight. Sheridan, though unhorsed, was mounted on 
a cannon, ordering a pursuit, and the guns of the summit 
were being turned upon the fleeing foe. Missionary 
Ridge belonged to the Union, and the honor of retaking 
it belonged to the private soldiers and to Grant. 



252 LIFE OF GRANT 

As he rode along the lines he was recognized, and 
husky cheers from almost breathless soldiers arose. They 
clung to his stirrups, and would not let him escape. 
"Now we know we have a general!" they cried. His 
pursuit did not cease till darkness fell. 

That night the Assistant Secretary of War sent this 
message to Washington : " Glory to God ! The day is 
decisively ours. Our men are frantic with joy and en- 
thusiasm, and received Grant, as he rode along the lines 
after the victory, with tumultuous shouts." The rank and 
file of the Cumberland Army were his to command. 

The next day was Thanksgiving day, and all over the 
nation grateful millions of people blessed the name of 
Grant, the prop-hauler of the Gravois, who had taken his 
place among the great captains of the world. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

GRANT MEETS LINCOLN AND IS MADE COMMANDER- 
IN-CHIEF 

JUST as Grant's success at Vicksburg had brought 
him to the command of the armies in the West, so 
his superb campaign at Chattanooga led to the thought 
that he was the one man in America to command in the 
East. Rightly or wrongly, the feeling grew that the 
leaders of movements in the East were insufficient. 
Grant was the man. Make him commander-in-chief in 
place of Halleck. 

Halleck professed entire willingness to be deposed in 
Grant's favor. He said : " I took it against my will, and 
shall be most happy to leave it as soon as another is des- 
ignated to fill it. . . . We iiave no time to quibble and 
contend for pride of personal opinion. On this subject 
there appears to be a better feeling among the officers of 
the West than here." 

In general the demand was that Grant should lead the 
Army of the Potomac against Lee ; but a larger scheme 
was on foot. Washburne introduced into Congress a bill 
reviving the grade of lieutenant-general, which had died 
with Washington, though General Scott had borne it by 
brevet. To the ebullient patriots of the lower house 
nothing was now too good for General Grant, and the bill 
was received with applause. There was no concealment 
of their wishes. They recommended Grant by name for 
the honor. 

Washburne took much pride in his early advocacy of 
Grant, and called on his colleagues to witness whether his 

253 



254 LIFE OF GRANT 

protege had not more than fulfilled all prophecies. " He 
has fought more battles and won more victories than any 
man living. He has captured more prisoners and taken 
more guns than any general of modern times." The bill 
passed the lower house by a vote of ninety-six to fifty- 
two, and the Senate with but six dissenting votes. In the 
Senate, however, the recommendation of Grant was 
stricken out, although it was suggested that the President 
might appoint some one else to the new rank instead of 
Grant. 

But the President was impatient to put Grant into the 
high place. He had himself had to plan battles and ad- 
judicate between rival commanders, in addition to his 
Presidential duties, until he was worn out. With a pro- 
found sigh of relief, he signed the bill, and nominated 
General Grant to be the lieutenant-general of the armies 
of the United States. 

Grant was at Nashville when an order came from the 
Secretary of War directing him to report in person to the 
War Department. His first thought seems to have been of 
Sherman, and his next of McPherson. On March 4, 1864, 
in a private letter, he wrote : 

Dear Sherman : The bill reviving the grade of lieutenant- 
general in the army has become a law, and my name has been 
sent to the Senate for the place. I now receive orders to report 
to Washington in person, which indicates either a confirmation 
or a likelihood of confirmation. I start in the morning to com- 
ply with the order ; but I shall say very distinctly, on my arrival 
there, that I accept no appointment which will require me to 
make that city my headquarters. This, however, is not what I 
started to write about. 

Whilst I have been eminently successful in this war in at least 
gaining the confidence of the public, no one feels more than I 
how much of this success is due to the skill and energy, and the 
harmonious putting forth of that energy and skill, of those whom 
it has been my good fortune to have occupying a subordinate 
position under me. 

There are many officers to whom these remarks are applicable 
to a greater or less degree, proportionate to their ability as sol- 
diers ; but what I want is to express my thanks to you and 
McPherson as the men to whom, above all others, I feel indebted 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 255 

for whatever I have had of success. How far your advice and 
suggestions have been of service, you know. How far your exe- 
cution of whatever has been given you to do entitles you to the 
reward I am receiving, you cannot know as well as I. I feel 
all the gratitude this letter can express, giving it the most flatter- 
ing construction. 

The word " you " I use in the plural, intending it for McPher- 
son also. I should write him, and will some day ; but, starting 
in the morning, I do not know that I will find time now. 

To this modest, manly, and deeply grateful letter Sher- 
man replied in kind. The friendship between these three 
men was of the most noble and unselfish character, difficult 
to parallel. Sherman said : 

Dear General: You do yourself injustice and us too much 
honor in assigning to us too large a share of the merits which 
have led to your high advancements. . . . You are Washington's 
legitimate successor, and occupy a place of almost dangerous 
elevation ; but if you can continue, as heretofore, to be yourself, 
simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy through life the 
respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of human 
beings, that will award you a large share in securing them and 
their descendants a government of law and stability. . . . 

Until you had won Donelson I confess I was almost cowed 
by the terrible array of anarchical elements that presented them- 
selves at every point ; but that admitted the ray of light which I 
have followed ever since. 

I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just as the great pro- 
totype Washington, as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest as a 
man should be; but the chief characteristic is the simple faith in 
success you have always manifested, which I can liken to no- 
thing else than the faith a Christian has in a Saviour. This faith 
gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you 
have completed your last preparations, you go into battle without 
hesitation, as at Chattanooga ; no doubts, no reserves; and I tell 
you it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew, wher- 
ever I was, that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place 
you would come, if alive. 

Now as to the future. Don't stay in Washington. Halleck 
is better qualified than you to stand the buffets of intrigue and 
policy. Come West. Take to yourself the whole Mississippi 
Valley. . . . Here lies the seat of coming empire, and from the 



256 LIFE OF GRANT 

West, v/hen our tasks are done, we will make short work of 
Charleston and Richmond and the impoverished coast of the 
Atlantic. 

With some such feeling in his own heart General Grant 
went to Washington to report to the War Department and 
to see Lincoln, whom up to this time he had never met. 
Of intrigue and jealousy, he was aware, the Western army- 
had enough, but he knew they were weak and mild com- 
pared to the division and bitterness at the East. He had 
no fear of Lee, — he was eager to meet him, — but he feared 
the politicians, the schemes, the influences of the capital. 
He went with the intention of returning to Chattanooga 
at once and making it his headquarters. 

On the way to Washington, he went carefully over the 
situation once more. He had observed from the first 
the lack of harmony in the movements of tlie armies of 
the North. They operated without system, without unity. 
The failure to cooperate had led to disaster at Shiloh, 
whereas the harmony of movement led to final victory at 
Vicksburg. The lack of prompt and harmonious coopera- 
tion had led to the beleaguerment of Burnside at Knox- 
ville and of Thomas at Chickamauga, while concerted action 
had snatched victory out of defeat at Chattanooga. 

Carrying these facts in his mind, Grant determined to 
demand of President Lincoln the assurance that the War 
Department should cease to command in the field. The 
War Department was an administrative office. The Sec- 
retary of War was a civilian, not a soldier, a political ap- 
pointment, and not a military chieftain. In time of war 
he should not have power to interfere with campaigns at 
the front. This was so obvious that its mere statement 
should have carried conviction, but it did not. Nominalh', 
Stanton, under the President, ranked every officer in the 
field, which was absurd. 

General Grant made up his mind to say to Lincoln : " I 
will accept the command of the armies of the United States 
provided I can be free from the interference of the War 
Department ; otherwise I shall be obliged to decline the 
honor." 

He arrived in Washington late in the afternoon, and 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 257 

went at once to a hotel. As he modestly asked for a 
room, the clerk loftily said : " I have nothing but a room 
on the top floor." 

"Very well; that will do," said Grant, registering his 
name. 

The clerk gave one glance at the name, and nearly 
leaped over the desk in his eagerness to place the best 
rooms in the house at Grant's disposal. 

As Grant entered the dining-room, some one said : 
"Who is that major-general?" His shoulder-straps had 
betrayed him. 

The inquiry spread till some one recognized him. 
"Why, that is Lieutenant-General Grant." 

A cry arose: "Grant! Grant! Grant!" The guests 
sprang to their feet, wild with excitement. " Where is 
he?" "Which is he?" 

Some one proposed three cheers for Grant, and when 
they were given. Grant was forced to rise and bow, and 
then the crowd began to surge toward him. He was 
unable to finish his dinner, and fled. 

Accompanied by Senator Cameron of Pennsylvania, he 
went to the White House to report to the President. 
Doubtless he would not have gone had he known that the 
President was holding a reception, for he was in his every- 
day uniform, which was considerably worn and faded. 
The word had passed swiftly that Grant was in town, and 
that he would call upon the President ; therefore the crowd 
was denser than usual. They did not recognize him at 
first ; but as the news spread, a curious murmur arose, and 
those who stood beside the President heard it and turned 
toward the door. As Grant entered a hush fell over the 
room. The crowd moved back, and left the two chief 
men of all the nation facing each other. 

Lincoln took Grant's small hand heartily in his big clasp, 
and said : " I 'm glad to see you, general." 

It was an impressive meeting. There stood the 
supreme Executive of the nation and the chief of its 
armies — tlie one tall, gaunt, almost formless, with wrin- 
kled, warty face, and deep, sorrowful eyes ; the other 
compact, of good size, but looking small beside the tall 



258 LIFE OF GRANT 

President, his demeanor modest, almost timid, but in the 
broad, square head and in the cIose-cHpped Hps showing 
decision, resolution, and unconquerable bravery. In some 
fateful way these two men, both born in humble condi- 
tions, far from the esthetic, the superfine, the scholarly, 
now stood together — the rail-splitter and the prop-hauler. 
In their hands was more power for good than any kings 
on earth possessed. They came of the West, but they 
stood for the whole nation, and for the Union, and for the 
rights of man. The striking together of their hands in a 
compact to put down rebellion and free the blacks was 
perceived to be one of the supremest moments of our 
history. 

For only an instant they stood there. Grant passed on 
into the East Room, where the crowd flung itself upon 
him. He was cheered wildly, and the room was jammed 
with people crazy to touch his hands. He was forced to 
stand on a sofa and show himself. He blushed like a girl. 
The hand-shaking brought streams of perspiration from his 
forehead and over his face. The hot room and the crowd 
and the excitement swelled every vein in his brow, till he 
looked more like a soldier fighting for his life than a hero 
in a drawing-room. There was something delightfully 
diffident and fresh and unspoiled about him, and words of 
surprise gave way to phrases of affection. He was seen 
to be the plain man his friends claimed him to be — home- 
spun, unaffected, sincere, and resolute. 

He was relieved at last by the approach of a messenger 
to call him to Mrs. Lincoln's side. With her he made a 
tour of the room, followed by the President with a lady 
on his arm, Lincoln's rugged face beaming with amused 
interest in his new general-in-chief. This ended Grant's 
sufferings for the moment. The President, upon reaching 
comparative privacy, said : 

*' I am to formally present you with your commission 
to-morrow morning at ten o'clock. I know, general, your 
dread of speaking, so I shall read what I have to say. It 
will only be four or five sentences. I would like you to 
say something in reply which will soften the feeling of jeal- 
ousy among the officers, and encourage the nation." 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 259 

At last the general escaped from the close air of the 
room, and as he felt the cool wind on his face outside the 
White House, he wiped the sweat from his brow, drew a 
long breath of relief, and said : " I hope that ends the 
show business." 

There were solemnity and a marked formality in the 
presentation of the commission. In the presence of his 
cabinet, the President rose and stood facing General 
Grant, beside whom was his little son and the members of 
his staff. From a slip of paper the President read these 
words : 

" General Grant: The nation's appreciation of what 
you have done, and its reliance upon you for what remains 
to be done, in the existing great struggle, are now pre- 
sented with this commission constituting you lieutenant- 
general in the army of the United States. With this high 
honor devolves upon you, also, a corresponding responsi- 
bility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, 
it will sustain you. I scarcely need to add that with what 
I here speak goes my own hearty concurrence." 

General Grant's reply was equally simple, but his hands 
shook, and he found some difficulty in controlling his 
voice. 

"Mr. President: I accept the commission with 
gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of 
the noble armies that have fought in so many fields for 
our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not 
to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of 
the responsibilities now devolving upon me, and I know 
that if they are met it will be due to those armies, and, 
above all, to the favor of that Providence which leads both 
nations and men." 

The two men again shook hands. Lincoln seemed to 
be profoundly pleased with Grant. He found in him one 
of his own people, suited to his own conception of an 
American citizen, a man of the " plain people," whom, 
he said, God must have loved, he made so many of them. 
He liked Grant's modesty, and was too shrewd to call it 
weakness. He had tried handsome and dashing generals, 
and big and learned generals, and cautious and strategic 



260 LIFE OF GRANT 

generals, and generals who filled a uniform without a 
wrinkle, and who glittered and gleamed on the parade, 
and had voices like golden bugles, and who could walk the 
polished floor of a ball-room with the grace of a dancing- 
master, and generals bearded and circumspect and severe. 
Now he was to try a man who despised show, who never 
drew his saber or raised his voice or danced attendance 
upon women ; a shy, simple-minded, reticent man, who 
fought battles with one sole purpose, to put down the 
Rebellion and restore peace to the nation ; a man who 
executed orders swiftly, surely, and expected the like 
obedience in others; a man who hated politics and de- 
spised trickery. 

A heavy rain was falling the second day of Grant's stay 
in Washington, but he did not allow it to interfere with 
his work. All day he rode about, visiting the fortifica- 
tions. That night he dined with Secretary Seward, de- 
lighting everybody by his simple directness of manner. 
He said little, but every word counted. The city was 
mad to see him. All day crowds surged to and fro in the 
hope of catching a momentary glimpse of him. A thou- 
sand invitations to dine were waiting him. But he kept 
under cover, and the next day he started for the head- 
quarters of the Army of the Potomac. He spent one day 
in swift, absorbed study of the situation. The day after, 
he returned to Washington, and started for Nashville to 
arrange his afifairs there so that he could return East. He 
had found so many rivalries and jealousies among the offi- 
cers that it became necessary to take command of the 
Army of the Potomac in person, or, at least, to make his 
headquarters in the field with it. He told the President 
that nine days would enable him to put his Western com- 
mand in shape to leave it. 

This undeviating and unhesitating action was a reve- 
lation of power to the East. The New York " Trib- 
une " said: "He hardly slept on his long journey East, 
yet he went to work at once. Senators state with joy 
that he is not going to hire a house in Washington, and 
make war ridiculous by attempting to manoeuver battles 
from an arm-chair in Washington." His refusal to dine 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 261 

and to lend himself to any " show business " was com- 
mented on with equal joy. The citizens of Washington 
could scarcely believe he had visited the city at all. The 
New York " Herald " said : " We have found our hero." 

He returned to Nashville to make the necessary changes 
of command. His own command there Sherman was to 
take, while McPherson moved into Sherman's place. 

These men Grant felt that he could trust absolutely, 
and though disappointed rivals complained severely, it 
made no difference. 

Sherman came up from Memphis to meet him at Nash- 
ville. To him Grant detailed as much of his plan as to 
any living man. One who saw the memorable meeting 
between them (General Badeau) has given the following 
vivid and powerful analysis of the two men. So impor- 
tant to the nation had they become, no one but Lincoln 
himself overtopped them in public interest. 

" The contrast between them was striking. Sherman 
was tall, angular, and spare, as if his superabundant energy 
had consumed his flesh ; sandy-haired, sharp-featured, his 
nose prominent, his lips thin, his gray eyes flashing, his 
whole face mobile as an actor's, his speech quick, decided, 
loud. His words were distinct, his ideas clear and rapid, 
coming, indeed, almost too fast for utterance, but in dra- 
matic, brilliant form, so that they got full development, 
while an eager gesticulation illustrated and enforced his 
thought. No one could be with him half an hour and 
doubt his greatness." 

" Grant was smaller, but stouter in form, younger in looks 
and years, calmer in manner a hundredfold. His hair and 
beard were brown, and both heavier than Sherman's ; his 
features marked, but not prominent ; while his eye, clear, 
but not piercing nor penetrating, seemed formed rather to 
resist than aid the interpretation of his thought, and never 
betrayed that it was sounding the depths of another nature 
than his own ; a heavy jaw ; a sharply cut mouth, which 
had a singular power of expressing sweetness and strength 
combined, and which at times became set with a rigidity 
like that of fate itself; a broad, square brow which at first 
struck no one as imposing — these made up a physiog- 



262 LIFE OF GRANT 

nomy that artists always liked to model. The habitual 
expression of his face was so quiet as to be almost incom- 
prehensible ; strong, but its strength concealed by the 
manner of wearing hair and beard. His figure was com- 
pact and of medium height, but, though well-made, he 
stooped slightly in the shoulders. His manner, plain, 
placid, almost meek, in great moments disclosed to those 
who knew him well immense, but still suppressed, inten- 
sity. In utterance he was slow and sometimes embar- 
rassed, but the words were well-chosen, never leaving the 
remotest doubt of what he intended to convey, and now 
and then fluent and forcible, when the speaker became 
aroused. The whole man was a marvel of simplicity, a 
powerful nature veiled in the plainest possible exterior, 
imposing on all but the acutest judges of character, or the 
constant companions of his unguarded hours. 

" Not a sign about him suggested rank or reputation or 
power. He discussed the most ordinary themes with ap- 
parent interest, and turned from them in the same quiet 
tones, and without a shade of difference in his manner, to 
decisions that involved the fate of armies, his own fame, 
or the life of the republic — sending forty thousand men 
on a new campaign or hearing of his own elevation to a 
power and position unsurpassed by that of any general in 
history with the same equanimity and apparendy the same 
indifTerence with which he listened to the trifles of the 
hour or the rumors of the camp ; but uttering at the most 
unexpected intervals, and in the most casual way, the 
clearest ideas in the tersest form ; announcing judgments, 
made apparently at the moment, which he never reversed, 
and which the world has never seen reason to reverse ; 
enunciating opinions or declaring plans of the most impor- 
tant character in the plainest words and commonest man- 
ner, as if great things and small were to him of equal 
moment, as if it cost him no more to command armies 
than to direct a farm, to capture cities than to drive a 
horse. 

" In battle, however, the sphinx awoke ; the riddle was 
solved. The outward calm, indeed, was even then not 
entirely broken ; but the utterance was prompt, the ideas 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 263 

were rapid, the judgment was decisive, the words were 
those of command. The whole man became intense, as it 
were, with a white heat. His nature, indeed, seemed hke 
a sword, drawn only in the field or in emergencies. At 
ordinary times a scabbard concealed the sharpness and 
temper of the blade ; but when this was thrown aside, amid 
the smoke and din of battle, the weapon flashed and thrust 
and smote and — won. 

" These two, so different, had been together in evil re- 
port and good report, in disaster and in victory, in battles 
and sieges and campaigns ; and neither had ever failed the 
other." 

They now struck hands in a great final campaign, Sher- 
man to start for the very heart of the Confederacy, Grant 
to return to the Potomac to confront and master Lee. 
There was to be no more backing and plunging of armies 
like a balky team. For good or ill, they were to move 
under the direction of one man, and that man subject only 
to Abraham Lincoln, the President. 

Promptly at the end of his nine days Grant was back in 
Washington. 

On the day of his return he held his first interview with 
Lincoln alone. Lincoln said, in his half-humorous fashion : 
" I have never professed to be a military man, nor to know 
how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted 
to interfere in them. But procrastination on the part of 
generals, and the pressure of the people at the North and 
of Congress, which is always with me, have forced me into 
issuing a series of military orders. I don't know but they 
were all wrong, and I 'm pretty certain some of them 
were. All I wanted, or ever wanted, is some one to take 
the responsibility and act — and call on me for all assistance 
needed. I pledge myself to use all the power of govern- 
ment in rendering such assistance." That was the sub- 
stance of the interview. Grant replying simply : " I will 
do the best I can, Mr. President, with the means at 
hand." 

Lincoln said later, in reply to a question : " I don't know 
General Grant's plans, and I don't want to know them. 
Thank God, I 've got a general at last! 



264 LIFE OF GRANT 

Grant went straight to headquarters at Culpeper, and 
the papers quoted with glee his words : " There will be no 
grand review, and no show business." The army was 
utterly strange to him. The men did not know him when 
they saw him. Many of the officers were McClellan-wor- 
shipers, and some of them secretly sneered at the Western 
man, who had in some mysterious way reached a dizzy 
height, from which they expected to see him fall resound- 
ingly. " He has Lee to meet," they said. 

General George G. Meade, who held the chief command 
in the army, was a man of most irascible temperament, 
but a patriot and a good soldier. He immediately said to 
General Grant: "General, the work before us is of too 
vast importance to allow the wishes or feelings of one 
person to stand in the way of selecting the right men for 
the right positions. If you would rather have General 
Sherman take my place, don't hesitate to say so. I will 
serve to the best of my ability in whatever position you 
place me." 

To this manly word Grant replied : " I have no thought 
of putting any one in your place, general. Sherman can- 
not be spared from the West." 

Now began mighty preparations. All things were to 
move together — Sherman on Johnston's army, Banks up 
Red River, Butler and Gillmore against Richmond from 
the south side of the James River, while Grant in person 
operated with Meade against Lee's army. "Where Lee's 
army goes, there you will go also," he said to Meade. 

Sherman's orders were to get as far into the interior of 
the Confederacy as possible. " I want to be ready to 
move by the 25th of April, if possible." 

Sherman exultantly replied : " That we are now to act 
on a common plan, converging to a common center, looks 
like civilized warfare." To Halleck he wrote: " I believe 
this grand army a unit now in action. General Grant has 
a mammoth load to carry. He wants some one here who 
will fulfil his plans, whole and entire, and at the time ap- 
pointed, and he believes I will do it. I hope he is not 
mistaken. With Thomas as my center, McPherson as my 
right, and Schofield on the left, I will have an army that 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 265 

will do anything within the range of human possibility. I 
will be ready when Grant is; then stand from under!" 

General Grant now commanded more men than any 
captain that ever lived. His battle-line was more than a 
thousand miles in length. It ran across the Alleghanies 
to Knoxville, to Chattanooga, to Huntsville, to Memphis, 
thence down the Mississippi to Vicksburg, and over to the 
Red River. The Southern armies heltl part of Texas and 
Louisiana, part of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the 
Carolinas, and a large part of Virginia. Guerrilla bands 
were continually raiding the country already held by the 
Northern troops. 

Grant had all these threads in his hands when he came 
to the East. He had fought his way through this terri- 
tory. He knew Columbus and Henry and Donelson and 
Vicksburg and Grenada and Jackson. He knew the diffi- 
culties, the resources of the country. He knew every 
commander, and the number of troops necessary to every 
part, not from theory, but because he had been there. 
His knowledge was so exhaustive that when, on the last 
days of April, he began to order his whole gigantic army 
into the field, he did it as easily as he commanded the 
lines of Chattanooga. He knew his men ; when he said 
to McPherson or Sherman, " Do this," or " Do that," 
the details could safely be left to them. Yet he was 
commander, and no one who knew him at that time 
doubted it. 

He deposed officers, and put men he knew in their 
places. He wanted men of action. He should have dis- 
charged others at the start. He directed the movement 
of supplies and of ammunition. His power and decision 
ran through the army like an electrical current. Every- 
where activity set in; lines were reformed; stragglers 
became soldiers; veterans on furlough were recalled. 
There was all too little time to get this army in hand. 

There was an ominous hush in the air as these secret 
orders went flashing over the wire. The leaders of the 
Confederacy made no mistake. They knew a different 
man had come to deal with them — a man whose lips gave 
out no indiscreet word. They could not divine his plan, 



266 LIFE OF GRANT 

but they assumed it would be a general attack. They 
well knew that a mighty struggle was impending. 

During this time, while in preparation for the spring cam- 
paign, General Grant's headquarters were visited by many 
correspondents. One from abroad, who had access to the 
inner military circles, said of him : " Grant is not intoxi- 
cated with flattery, as was McClellan ; I never met with a 
man of so much simplicity, shyness, and decision. He has 
lost nothing of his freshness of mind. He avoids Wash- 
ington and its corrupting allurements. He is essentially a 
soldier of the camp and field. All his predecessors were 
ruined by Washington influences. He has established his 
headquarters ten miles nearer the enemj^ than Meade. 
His tents are almost among the soldiers. That is a West- 
ern, and not a Potomac, army custom. He travels with 
the simplicity of a second lieutenant, with a small trunk, 
which he often forgets and goes off without. If Grant 
fails, then a curse is on this army. He is a soldier to the 
core, a genuine commoner, commander of a democratic 
army from a democratic people. All this is very different 
from McClellan. From what I learn of him, he is no more 
afraid to take the responsibility of a million men than of 
a single company." 

The South divined, too, in a vague way, that Grant stood 
for the plain people of the North, and not its politicians. 
Their editors gave warning: " Grant is a determined man, 
and has a tremendous force under his hand, and we may 
rest assured that when he is beaten, it will be only when 
the last capacity for fight has been taken out of him and 
his army. Until this is done, our generals, army, and 
government should brace every nerve, stretch every sinew, 
force nature, and yield nothing to fatigue." 

Lee understood this. Almost as silent as Grant, sad, 
resolute, and lonely in the midst of his army, he pondered 
on the coming of this new antagonist. He, too, began 
preparations. Orders went out through all the South to 
sweep the country clean of men of fighting age ; all be- 
tween seventeen and fifty must carry arms. He hurried 
detachments to the rear to seize and impress all stragglers, 
deserters, and conscripts. Swiftly, determinedly, the whole 



GRANT MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 267 

South concentrated before the terrible Sherman and the 
enigmatical Grant. 

There were not wanting voices of entreaty opposing 
this last desperate stand of the Southern soldier against 
the illimitable and inexorable North. But they were of 
no avail. The leaders of the South were not yet ready to 
cease from the shedding of blood. They began to de- 
spair, but they would not yield. Preparations went on. 
Each day saw these prodigious armies increasing in power 
and intensifying in determination. Parks of artillery 
shifted ground, and the rumble of their movements was 
like the sound of coming tempests. Foraging-parties 
swept over the land, leaving every farm-house bare of 
food, and every farm-yard silent of its cattle. The rattle 
of long trains of wagons, the braying of mules, the lowing 
of cattle, seemed to prophesy some all-enveloping ap- 
proaching cataclysm. Every portent of horror, every 
foreboding and dread of the barbarism of war, received 
new emphasis, new terror. 

At last the day came when the minute, indistinguishable 
atom of blue among these swarms of other similar human 
beings — this man from whom a million of his fellow-men 
were to take their motion — was ready to lift his hand. 
With calm face, with unshaken nerve, he took a final 
survey of the field of war. He touched swords with 
Sherman, and found him ready. To some men the re- 
sponsibility would have been too great, paralyzing the 
will ; but Grant's eyes were never clearer, his voice was 
never calmer, than when he said : " All is ready. Strike 
tents! By the left flank, forward, march!" 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 

IT was in the early days of May, when the South was 
filled with fragrance of blooming plants and trees. 
The air was soft and sensuous, and all nature was rebuild- 
ing, healing, renewing, and the heart of man should have 
been turned to the planting of seeds in the earth and the 
driving forth of cattle to pasture. It was the month of 
youth and love. But in the midst of this gentle, amiable 
hour of nature's renaissance, Grant's armed and serried 
soldiers moved upon the foe. When the citizens of Cul- 
peper woke in the morning on the 4th of May, they were 
amazed to find the Northern army gone. It was cross- 
ing the Rapidan River. Grant had begun his campaign 
against Lee. The whole nation now waited the onset. 

His aim was to flank Lee, and fight him between Cul- 
peper and Richmond, if he would stand. Lee was ready 
to fight. The two greatest warriors of the North and 
South were now set face to face. Grant had the larger 
army, but Lee had the inside lines, which was an enormous 
advantage. He knew the country, too, and could choose 
his own ground for attack. He selected the moment, and 
struck the Northern army just as it was crossing a fire- 
scarred, desolate, and almost impenetrable jungle called 
the " Wilderness." It was a land filled with thickets for 
ambuscades, surprises, bewilderments. 

The Southern leader chose a most favorable moment for 
attack, but he found, not a " loose mass of men," but a 
wall of soldiery. His intention was to smash Grant's army 
in detail, and send it back across the Rapidan. He sent 

268 



GOIxNTG INTO THE WILDERNESS 269 

his whole army against Grant, and by midday on the 5th 
of May both armies were engaged in a death-grapple. 
For miles the sound of guns, blended with thunderous 
commands, made the place a hell which the hovering bat- 
tle-smoke made the more appalling. Every thicket con- 
cealed assailants ; every ridge sustained cannon of enor- 
mous size and fury. 

But Grant could not be stampeded. When the battle 
was at its worst " he sat smoking a wooden pipe. His 
face seemed as peaceful as a summer evening. His gen- 
eral demeanor was of indescribable imperturbability." 
Aides came and went with excited messages. He heard 
them through, turned to Meade, made suggestions in a 
low voice, and returned to his pipe and his whittling. 
There was nothing to indicate his great rank ; scarcely 
could he have been distinguished as an officer by one who 
was a stranger to his ways and his person. He was 
anxious, terribly anxious, but his wonderful self-control, 
and the strange mask of his face, concealed his emotion. 
Occasionally, when something demanded his personal 
direction, he mounted his horse, and darted away swiftly 
to the front. He had no fear ; he was, on the contrary, 
criminally reckless of his life. 

Once an excited orderly rushed up to the whittling 
general, and cried out : 

" They have broken through ! Hancock has given way ! " 

" I don't believe it," said Grant, in laconic and emphatic 
reply, chipping away at the root of the tree against which 
he sat. He knew Hancock, and believed in him. Then, 
perceiving the aide's condition, he said kindly : " You are 
fatigued and nervous; go in and lie down for a while." 

The night came, and laid a hush on the battle, which 
was unfinished. Lee had failed to break the Union line, 
and now the men wondered what Grant would do. 

He ordered an attack at half-past four in' the morning. 
It was his intention to fire the first gun ; but the uncon- 
querable Lee also determined to show his confidence. 
The two armies began the appalling duel simultaneously, 
and all day, in the spicy jungle, under a burning sun, the 
two armies charged each other, desperate, parched with 



2 70 LIFE OF GRANT 

thirst, stained with smoke, staggering to and fro with the 
faces of demons or of men walking in frenzy. Now one 
section in blue made a sounding rush, carrying the gray 
lines away, and then the gray-coats massed and came 
back, yelling with demoniacal battle-madness. The sky 
grew thick with smoke, which obscured the light of the 
sun but seemed to intensify the heat. 

Grant, sitting at Meade's headquarters, as before, hs- 
tened with the ear of an expert, yet appeared not to hear. 
His cigar went out after a time, and he chewed at it slowly, 
a sign of intense intellectual activity and anxiety with him. 
His eyes were cast down as if in thought. It was only as 
some orderly or aide rode up in hot haste that he looked 
up to read the import of the message in the face of the 
messenger. 

" No movement of the enemy seemed to puzzle or dis- 
concert him. Fertile in resources, the petition for rein- 
forcement was speedily answered." His whittling was 
strange to see. He made no start, did not rise to his feet, 
when above the roar of the cannon the terrifying, appalling 
battle-cry of the charging Southerners rose, uttered by ten 
thousand maddened men. He listened, or, turning, spoke 
a low word to some member of his staff. 

Wherever he went, the men cheered, and fought the 
harder. It gave them hope to know the eye of the com- 
mander was on them. Every officer who came into his 
presence felt a return of confidence, and lost something of 
any depression he may have felt. 

Once he said to General Wright: "Hello, Wright. I 
heard you 'd gone to Richmond," — in allusion to a report 
of Wright's repulse, — and smiled at Wright's sturdy reply. 

That night the sun went down red as blood ; the sky was 
clouded with the hell-smoke of two hundred thousand 
muskets, and the woods were on fire. The jungle began 
to burn the dying and the dead it had tortured with thirst. 

Near midnight a correspondent sat at a camp-fire, un- 
able to sleep, wondering sadly if he had followed the vic- 
torious Western chief to the Army of the Potomac only 
to chronicle his ruin. Looking up, he saw Grant sitting 
on the other side of the fire, his hat slouching so low and 



GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 27 1 

the collar of his blue overcoat standing so high that most 
of his face was hidden. He, too, was buried in thought. 
Through the long, trying day his serenity had appeared 
unshaken ; but now that he was alone, nervous shiftings of 
one leg over the other, and worn, haggard looks, showed 
how deeply he was moved by the dreadful and seemingly 
fruitless shedding of blood. 

To General Wright he had seemed almost careless of 
the break in the lines ; not a muscle of his face quivered. 
To those who did not know him he seemed never to think 
of the dying or the dead, and yet suffering drew quick 
tears from his eyes. His philosophy sustained him. He 
was cruel only to be kind. Up to the date of his com- 
mand, more than one hundred and thirty thousand men 
had been sacrificed in the Eastern armies, to little result. 
The war must end soon. It was costly ; the North was 
crying out against the sacrifice ; and it lay with him more 
than with any other man to determine how long it should 
continue. He was haggard and worn and sorrowful, but 
he was relentless. It was better for a thousand men to 
die in battle than for ten thousand to die in camp. He 
went to bed at last, determined to order an advance. He 
had determined to take no backward steps. 

Early the next morning, the third day in the Wilder- 
ness, the enemy being quiet, he issued orders for an ad- 
vance from the right to the left. Hancock was to remain 
where he was till Warren passed him, thus keeping the 
line always reinforced before the enemy. 

Lee had withdrawn within intrenchments. Two terri- 
ble days' fighting had satisfied his men. Their hot blood 
was cooled. But within the Union army was still doubt. 
The men in Warren's cofps talked all day about it. 
" We 're whipped again ; now we 're going back," they 
said. Some few said : " No ; we will have more fighting." 
The day wore on, and at dark orders ran along the line : 
"Fall in! No noise!" 

" What does this mean ? " 

" We 're going back to Culpeper." 

But when the orders came to march, they turned to the 
east. A note of keen exultation ran along the line: 



2^2 LIFE OF GRANT 

" We 're going forward ! Grant 's the man ! No more 
retreats!" 

As they marched they came upon Hancock's men, 
sleeping where they had halted, in long lines, like dead 
men prepared for burial. As they heard the tramp of 
feet, the rattle of canteens, they roused up. 

"Who are you?" 

" Warren's corps." 

" Good God! where are you going?" 

Quickly, exultantly, came the reply: "On to Rich- 
mond!" 

Then wild cheers arose, and the men of Warren's corps 
marched on, singing, as they marched, this refrain : 

" Ulysses leads the van! 
For we will dare 
To follow where 
Ulysses leads the van." 

" Lee no longer commands both these armies," said 
some of the soldiers. " The Army of the Potomac no 
longer takes orders from him. We 've got a general of 
our own. 

" Ulysses leads the van ! 
For we will dare 
To follow where 
Ulysses leads the van." 

Ulysses led the van. At about nine o'clock, followed 
by his staff, Grant started to the left. " He led the way, 
dashing along by-roads to avoid the troops and wagon- 
trains. He galloped along in the darkness, his escort 
trailing behind ; and whenever he passed a body of troops, 
and they discovered who it was passing, they raised such 
cheers and exultant outcries as the army had never heard. 
No commander could have asked more heartfelt confi- 
dence. " The general rode along like a warrior with seri- 
ous business in hand. There was no smiling and bowing 
toward the troops. He was gratified, but it did not change 
him from his intent purpose." At twelve o'clock he 
reached Todd's Tavern, wrapped himself in his blanket, 
and slept till morning. 



GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 273 

All night long his army moved, the right wing sliding 
by the center and right ; and when morning dawned a 
new line was formed. Grant had fought his way out of 
the Wilderness. Lee had done his worst. He had failed 
to break the line or check the advance. 

He was told Grant was retreating. " You are mistaken," 
he replied, — "quite mistaken; Grant isn't a retreating 
man." He soon learned of Grant's movement, and the 
two armies met in terrific battle at Spottsylvania Court- 
house, and against the mass of Grant's line Lee drove his 
army again and again, to no gain and to great loss. 
Grant and his subordinates remained unshaken. His army 
now had absolutely unwavering faith in him, and was in 
dauntless courage. 

He was justified in saying: "The results of the three 
days' fighting are in our favor." " I shall take no back- 
ward steps," he wrote, on the 9th; and on the iith, after 
a week of relentless fighting and steady advance, in a 
communication to Halleck he added a companion line to 
his Donelson ultimatum: "I propose to fight it out on 
this line, if it takes all summer." 

The whole land took it up in a flame of enthusiasm. It 
was a new note of warfare. In its grim sententiousness 
was the promise of victory and peace to a tortured nation. 
It made Grant, for the time, something superhuman. It 
seemed that such a leader could not be conquered. The 
whole nation prayed that fevers and the elements and the 
missiles of the enemy might spare his life. Upon his 
single life the Union now seemed staked. The mere 
thought of his death made the heart's blood of patriots 
run cold with horror. 

On the 2 1st of May he began again that peculiar, 
menacing sidewise crawl of his army toward the south, 
moving, as before, from right to left. Lee interposed 
again. Having the inside lines, and less incumbered by 
wagon-trains, he was able to move quicker. He was 
again repulsed, and Grant's inexorable advance was again 
resumed. 

On the last day of May, Sheridan, in the advance, and 
almost within sight of Richmond, met Lee's army in force. 



2 74 LIFE OF GRANT 

With orders from his chief to hold the crossing at Cold 
Harbor Tavern at all hazards, Sheridan dismounted his 
men, and intrenched. Against his lines, thus sheltered, 
the enemy could not advance. In the morning the infan- 
try arrived, and the two armies met in another desperate 
battle. Lee was fighting for Richmond in very truth now. 
The smoke of her chimneys could be seen in the Southern 
sky. Grant was eager to close the campaign. Reordered 
a general assault, which failed. He took a day to bury 
the dead and post his arriving troops, and on the third 
day ordered another assault. This, too, failed, for lack of 
personal supervision of Meade's orders by Grant, and 
from lack of energy and cooperation among commanders. 
The loss on both sides was very great. 

Most commanders would have been broken by these 
apparent failures, but Grant was not of that kind. Once 
more he surprised his friends and bewildered his enemies 
by an unexpected and skilful movement. He began his 
flanking movement as though Cold Harbor had never been. 

Whatever the leaders of the Confederacy said in public, 
in secret they were appalled at these tactics. None knew 
better than Lee and Hill and Beauregard what this move- 
ment meant. They were powerless to do more than 
check it or turn it aside. An officer writing from Lee's 
headquarters expressed the general feeling: 

It is admitted that Lee has at last met a foeman who matches 
his steel, although he may not be worthy of it. Each guards 
himself perfectly, and gives his blow with a precise eye and cool 
and sanguinary nerve. . . . From first to last Grant has shown great 
skill and prudence, combined with remorseless persistence and 
brutality. He is a scientific Goth resembling Alaric, destroying 
the country as he goes, and delivering the people over to starva- 
tion. Nor does he bury his dead, but leaves them to rot on the 
battle-field. He has commenced again, sliding his right down 
past his left, doubtless in order to reach Bottom's Bridge and 
the Long Bridge, with the intention of crossing to the Richmond 
side. ... It may be, and probably is, Grant's design to make 
across the James River to seize our communications, and thus 
assure the destruction of our supphes and compel surrender ulti- 
mately through starvation. 



GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 275 

Grant had become the " crafty Ulysses " to the 
Southern editors. They no longer talked about his luck 
and his ignorance of strategy. His skill in handling a 
large army was now acknowledged by Generals Hill and 
Beauregard. 

It is arrant nonsense for Lee to say Grant can't make a night 
march without his knowing it. Has he not slipped around him 
four times already? Grant can get twenty thousand men to 
Westover, and Lee know nothing about it. What is to become 
of Petersburg? Its loss surely involves that of Richmond. 

In this letter from General Hill to Beauregard was a 
soldierly perception of Grant's last and most important 
flanking movement. On the night of the 1 2th of June the 
Union troops crossed the Chickahominy River and started 
on a swift march to the left. Grant had determined to 
place himself south of Richmond, seizing Petersburg, if 
possible, and moving immediately on Richmond and Lee's 
army — a most daring and splendid plan, which Lee could 
scarcely believe possible. It was like Grant's superb au- 
dacity in getting south of Vicksburg. For two days Lee 
telegraphed anxiously, almost distractedly, to Generals 
Hill, Hampton, and Beauregard : " Where is Grant's 
army?" "Find Grant's army." He was entirely at a 
loss. Grant had again spirited his army of a hundred 
thousand men out of the Confederate sight. 

The chief's plan of action now began to be understood 
by Lincoln. " I begin to see it, God bless you!" he tele- 
graphed. 

Grant's continually flanking advance had at last brought 
him within striking distance of the Confederate capital. 
He was now ready to cooperate with Butler and attack 
Richmond from the rear, cutting off Lee's southern lines 
of communication. In doing this he left Washington un- 
guarded and the whole North apparently open to the 
raids of the Southern cavalry. But he intended Lee to 
have good use for every horse and man around Rich- 
mond, so that for the Confederates to go North would 
not merely be a "swap of capitals" — it would be the 
destruction of Lee's army. 



276 LIFE OF GRANT 

On June 14 he despatched to Halleck : "Our forces 
will commence crossing the James to-day. The enemy 
shows no signs of having brought troops to the south side 
of Richmond. I will have Petersburg secured, if possible, 
before they get in much force." 

It was Grant's design to end the campaign right there, 
and the leaders of the Southern army were more than half 
convinced that he was about to close his tremendous and 
skilful campaign with victory. On the 15th of June his 
advance, under General W. F. Smith, operating under 
General Butler, who commanded at Bermuda Hundred, 
made an attack on Petersburg, which lies about twenty 
miles below Richmond. The first assault was successful, 
but was not vigorously followed up. General Smith, 
after taking the outworks, bivouacked, waiting for Gen- 
eral Hancock to come up. Through some negligence, 
Hancock's rations, which Grant had ordered Butler to 
forward, did not reach him promptly, and he waited for 
them several invaluable hours, and finally started without 
them. He did not arrive in support of Smith until late in 
the afternoon. Even then the city could have been taken. 
No considerable body of troops had passed toward the 
city up to four o'clock on the i6th. It was a moonlight 
night, and a bold movement would have disclosed the 
weakness of the garrison. 

Hancock, waiving rank, asked for orders. General 
Smith asked him to relieve his men in the intrenchments. 
Nothing further was done by the Union commanders, but 
all night long the Confederate leaders hurried men and 
ammunitions southward, and when morning came the 
gray-coats filled Petersburg. The golden hours had been 
wasted ; Lee was intrenched, and as strong as ever. 

And so this bloody duel between two monstrous armies 
settled to a sullen siege. If Petersburg and Richmond 
had been carried, as several of the Confederate generals ap- 
prehended they would be, it would have been indisputably 
one of the greatest campaigns in history. It would have 
saved millions of dollars and thousands of human lives. 

The whole North turned sick with disappointment. 
They had looked for a short, sharp campaign ending in 
victory; and so it would have been but for the unforeseen 



GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 2-]-] 

delays and embarrassments of a complicate movement. 
Probably no one was culpable, but into the chorus of praise 
crept the bitter words of Grant's enemies. Some sneered : 
"This man from the West was successful till he met a 
real general." Grant, with his customary patience, uttered 
no word of explanation or complaint. 

General Lee had fought his battles with almost equal 
skill and determination. His army was compact, less en- 
cumbered, and swifter of movement. He knew the coun- 
try — every short cut, every swamp. Every man he had 
was available ; details for guarding trains and supplies 
were unnecessary. He had the interior lines, and, being 
on the defensive, could select his own moment for strik- 
ing. He had more than seventy-five thousand men against 
Grant's one hundred and six thousand. Grant's lines 
were a crawling, enveloping cordon, Lee's a battering- 
ram. Grant's work was to surround, Lee's to pierce. 

Once when a group of officers were decrying Grant's 
campaign. General Lee said : " Gentlemen, I think Gen- 
eral Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well." 
This from General Lee, who was, like Grant, a man of few 
words, was very significant. He understood something 
of the difficulties in his adversary's way. He appreciated 
the generalship of a man who could take an army of a 
hundred thousand men out of his knowledge for two days. 

Early in July, General Grant wrote to Lincoln, suggest- 
ing a call for three hundred thousand more men. In his 
judgment, more troops were necessary, to enable him to 
prevent raids throughout the vast extent of captured ter- 
ritory, and also to drive the enemy from his front without 
losing the lines he already held or by attacking fortifica- 
tions. He well knew that Lee had made his last assault. 

To this letter Lincoln replied, saying : " I think you have 
not seen the call already issued." Father Abraham had 
already called for 

Three hundred thousand more, 
Shouting the battle-cry of " Freedom! " 

During the month which followed, an assault by way 
of a mine was planned by Generals Burnside and Meade, 
in which the chief acquiesced. Under the direction of 



278 LIFE OF GRANT 

Colonel Pleasants of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania, a 
regiment of miners, a tunnel was run beneath the enemy's 
work, and an enormous mine made ready for explosion. 
General Grant, by several menacing movements against 
Richmond, drew the weight of Lee's troops away from 
the fortifications fronting Burnside, and July 30 was fixed 
as the date of the mine's trial and the accompanying 
assault. 

As the day drew near Grant became increasingly anx- 
ious about its outcome. He bivouacked with Burnside's 
corps, to be near in case of need. He gave final instruc- 
tions on the night preceding the firing of the fuse. The 
works were to be cleared during the early part of the 
night, so that nothing should obstruct the morning at- 
tack. The hour set for touching the fuse was half-past 
three in the morning. Lots were drawn among the divi- 
sion commanders of Burnside's corps. The leadership fell 
to General Ladlie, the man least fitted for the w^ork, and 
the first mistake was made. Burnside had decided to 
send General Ferrero's colored troops into the breach, 
but was overruled by Meade, and sustained by the chief. 
Thus a second mistake was headed ofT. At last all was 
ready. The fuse was laid, the troops under orders, and 
Grant and Meade were both at hand. 

Everybody was astir in the moonless dawn. It was 
dark and still. At half-past three the chief stood, watch 
in hand, waiting. The army listened. The hour passed. 
Ten minutes, thirty minutes, and still no sound. Forty- 
five went by, and light began to break in the east. The 
commanders were impatient. Meade was raging; but the 
chief stood motionless, with lips sternly set, and brow lined 
with anxiety. Then an aide brought explanation. The 
fuse had been lighted, and had smoldered out somewhere 
in the long passage. 

But two brave men (let their names be remembered), 
Jacob Douty and Henry Reese, of the Forty-eighth Penn- 
sylvania, had entered the gallery to find and repair the 
fuse. There was nothing to do but wait. General Grant 
was not in command at that moment; Sergeant Reese 
was. 



GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 279 

At last, over an hour past the appointed time, the 
monstrous upheaval took place — first a shock, then a 
roar, then the lifting of great masses of earth in the air, 
wherein, mingled with flame and dust and disjected can- 
non, the torn, flapping, grotesque forms of men could be 
seen in momentary hideous contortions. A crater thirty- 
feet deep, sixty feet wide, and nearly two hundred feet 
long was opened by this terrific mine. 

Then the cannon opened from the Union lines, battery 
after battery, till nearly two hundred pieces were in action. 
The air shivered and pulsed with the hot breath of these 
monsters, and the ground trembled under their convulsive 
leaping. It seemed nothing could live where their missiles 
fell. The assaulting columns poured into the breach. 
They started promptly and vigorously, but once in the 
chasm, they fell into confusion. Some scrambled up the 
sloping sandy sides. Some fell to rescuing Confederate sol- 
diers buried to the neck in debris. Others scorched the 
works before them, sharp-shooting on their own account. 
All order was lost. One regiment crowded upon another, 
mixed and jumbled into a mob. There was no leadership. 
Chaotic crowds clamored for direction. The thunder of 
cannon and the howls of shells made the screams of regi- 
mental commanders of little account. General Ladlie was 
nowhere to be seen. Generals of brigades were not nu- 
merous. No one wished to enter that death-trap, where 
sand and shapeless blocks of earth made alignment impos- 
sible and assault almost certain death. 

And yet at first there was little danger. Had the ad- 
vance pushed on rapidly, giving place to the succeeding 
columns, the whole division could have been set safely on 
high ground within the enemy's lines before they recovered 
from their dismay. For nearly an hour the gray-coats 
stood afar, in fear and awe. Then, reforming, they came 
back to the defense, and poured a desolating hail of bul- 
lets upon the heads of the blue-coated men in the crater. 
Grant, seeing that something was wrong, mounted his 
horse and made directly to the front. He soon came to 
a brigade lying upon its arms. 

"Who commands this brigade?" he inquired. 



28o LIFE OF GRANT 

" I do," said an officer, springing^ from the ground. 

"Why are you not moving on?" 

" My orders are to follow that brigade," replied the 
officer. "Will you give me the order to go now? " 

" No," replied the chief, and rode on. 

Everywhere the same story — everywhere men and offi- 
cers waiting for the advance columns to move. Grant 
kept on until it was unsafe to go farther on horseback. 
He dismounted, and, followed by Colonel Porter, elbowed 
his way in all haste toward General Burnside. It was 
evident that the attack had failed. The army was mak- 
ing leaderless and ineffectual assault, and Grant was 
hurrying to stop the sacrifice. To save time and to gain 
speed, he climbed the parapet, and ran along the outer 
wall of the Union defenses, exposed to the enemy's fire. 
He was streaming with perspiration and covered with 
dust, but he hurried on without glancing back, while the 
cannon-shots plowed up the ground around him. 

General Burnside, occupying one of the most advanced 
earthworks, was amazed to see the commander of the 
armies of the United States enter the Union works from 
the outside, dusty, panting with fatigue, his face dark with 
anxiety and disappointment. 

" General Burnside, the entire opportunity has been lost. 
There is now no chance of success. These troops must 
be immediately withdrawn. It is slaughter to leave them 
there." 

It was two o'clock before this order of General Grant 
was carried out. The assault ended in bitter failure — for 
lack of competent leadership, Grant thought. " I believe 
that the men would have performed every duty required 
of them, if they had been properly led." The month 
closed gloomily, and the critics in the North held Grant 
responsible.* 

The explosion of this mine and the accompanying as- 
sault, great as they seemed, and disastrous as they proved, 
were, after all, only incidents in the great campaign to 

* This account of Grant's visit to Burnside is based upon General Porter's 
story in his " Campaigning with Grant." The official Records of the War 
Department furnish the basis of criticism. 



GOING INTO THE WILDERNESS 28 I 

which Grant had set his hand. He now planned to hold 
Lee where he was, and push the distant Union armies 
into new positions. The Southern forces had at last con- 
centrated into two grand armies, Hood confronting Sher- 
man in Georgia, and Lee defending Richmond. The 
question was not how to whip them, but how to destroy 
them. 

The country fell into the trough of depression again, 
and Grant, upon whom so much depended, was again 
counted a failure. Condemnation became general, sweep- 
ing, and unjust. Vicious stories again circulated in 
private circles, set afloat by discredited and displaced sub- 
ordinates. The army was still filled with antagonisms 
and jealousies, and defeat and criticism brought about the 
bitterest recriminations. Unquestionably, Grant should 
have relieved a half-dozen of his subordinates, and re- 
placed them by those in harmony with himself and Gen- 
eral Meade. Napoleon or Bismarck would have had them 
shot. If Grant was culpable at all, it was in not com- 
manding his subordinates with absolute authority. 

Again the strong nature of the man came out. In the 
midst of all discouragement, he set his teeth hard, and 
tightened his hold upon Lee and the capital of the 
Confederacy. 

July was a hard month for General Grant. His tre- 
mendous campaign had ended in apparent failure. 
Washington was menaced by Confederate forces under 
General Early. Sherman was confronted by Johnston 
and Hood at Atlanta; the Army of the Potomac was dis- 
couraged, grumbling at the heat, and filled with jealousy 
and disputes ; while the country had again lost faith in 
General Grant himself. 

Sherman was calling for reinforcements, and he himself 
felt the need of more men. But the most dangerous and 
disheartening thing of all was the rising clamor of half- 
hearted Northern critics. Upon this indifference the 
South calculated. The North had almost ceased to vol- 
unteer; the draft had been put in force; and in the face 
of new demands for reinforcements the copperhead press 
of the North filled the air with howls for " peace at any 



282 LIFE OF GRANT 

cost." Citizens were advised to resist the draft. Meet- 
ings were called in Northern cities to denounce Grant and 
the administration. Lincoln had been renominated for 
the Presidency, and his election was as necessary to the 
nation as the success of Sherman or Grant in the field. 
No truthful history of the campaigns can ignore the enemy 
in the rear. 

Under these circumstances, insecurity again crept into 
the minds of the War Department. Halleck advised 
against any more severe fighting. The people were cry- 
ing out against the destruction of their sons, and the 
enormous daily expense of the army was sinking the 
nation hopelessly into debt. The great, rich, and powerful 
North was divided, censorious, or, worse still, indifferent, 
while the South was a military camp, a unit, desperately 
resolute, and loyal to their cause, even to the last man. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 

DISHEARTENED by the clamor, but not for a 
moment despairing, Grant set to work. He sent 
General Wright to oppose Early and drive him and break 
him. He ordered all the recruits in the instruction schools 
in the North turned over to Sherman, and assured him 
that Lee was not likely to reinforce any other armies 
whatsoever. It was to keep Lee engaged that he moved 
from right to left again, threatening one of the principal 
railways over which Richmond was supplied. It instructed 
Lee, who could do nothing but wait Grant's motion, that 
the Union commander had not loosened his hold. 

Personal losses and annoyances thickened, also. Gen- 
eral McPherson, whom Grant loved with a brother's 
affection, was killed before Atlanta, and the chief felt his 
death more keenly than he cared to express. When the 
news came, he was forced to retire to his tent, weeping. 

He had become involved, also, in a very serious entan- 
glement with General Butler, an able man and a distin- 
guished civilian, but distrusted as a commander. Grant 
wished very much to relieve him, but was prevented from 
doing so because of political conditions in the North. 
General McClellan was in the field as a Presidential can- 
didate in opposition to Lincoln, and was sure to receive a 
large vote. The election of Lincoln was an absolute ne- 
cessity in carrying on the war, as every loyal commander 
in the armies knew, and everything in the front was done 

with an eye not merely to the enemies in gray, but to the 

283 



284 LIFE OF GRANT 

enemies in civilian dress in the North. Therefore Gen- 
eral Grant bore with many things, suffering in silence 
under the criticisms of those who did not know the secret 
conditions of the time. He could not relieve General 
Butler without throwing loose upon the North another 
powerful, unsparing critic of Lincoln and the war policy 
he had inaugurated. Neither could he report upon the 
disaster at Petersburg on the 30th of July without reflect- 
ing upon influential generals, thus giving keener edge to 
the differences, amounting to antagonisms, which already 
existed between the corps commanders. 

In addition to all these things, the cry, " Stop this 
wholesale murder!" was raised. He himself was called 
" Grant the butcher." The number of men killed in the 
long campaign from the Rapidan to Petersburg was held 
up before the world's eyes with shrieks of horror. Grant 
was held responsible for this bloodshed by the peace party 
in the North. 

To this he grimly replied : " I am commanding an army. 
The business of an army is to fight. This is war. I am 
determined to whip out the Rebellion. There is no other 
way. I am pursuing the same policy which I began at 
Belmont. It is my intention to fight." 

At the same time another great party cried out: " On 
to Richmond! Why don't you crush the small army of 
Lee, and end the war? Hurl your men upon that thin 
gray line, and so end it." 

Between these opposing parties, it seemed, any ordinary 
commander would have had all courage and hope and loy- 
alty crushed out of him. But General Grant was not a 
politician; he was not devising civil policies: he was exe- 
cuting military commands. The President and War De- 
partment had made him general-in-chief of the armies of 
the North, and he was directing them with entire single- 
ness of aim. He continued to fight, though obliged to 
consider Lincoln's reelection a part of his autumn campaign. 
Therefore he was exceedingly careful of attack, content- 
ing himself with a sure and safe advance, holding Lee at 
Richmond while sending Sherman through the richest and 
hitherto untouched portion of the Confederacy. 



THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 285 

In a letter to his friend Washburne, he said: 

We are progressing here slowly. The weather has been in- 
tolerably warm, so much so that marching troops is nearly 
death. . . . All we want now to assure an early restoration of 
the Union is a determined unity of sentiment North. The 
rebels have now in their ranks their last man ; a man lost by 
them cannot be replaced. They have robbed the cradle and the 
grave equally to get their present force. I have no doubt the 
enemy are exceedingly anxious to hold out until after the Presi- 
dential election. They have many hopes upon its effect. They 
hope for the election of a peace candidate. 

Our peace friends, if they expect peace from separation, are 
much mistaken. It would be but the beginning of war, with 
thousands of our men joining the South because of our disgrace in 
allowing separation. To have " peace on any terms " the South 
would demand a restoration of their slaves already freed ; they 
would demand indemnity for losses sustained ; and they would 
demand a treaty which would make the North slave-hunters for 
the South. 

This letter shows how deeply he had considered the 
whole problem. He never for one moment yielded to the 
indifferentism of the North. He was determined to break 
the Southern armies, and the harsher the criticism on him 
the tighter his grip became. He was quite of a mind 
with Lincoln, who wrote : " I have seen your despatch 
expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where 
you are. Hold on with a bulldog grip." 

These two men, without anger, charged at one time 
with not being antislavery men, were now the leaders in 
a final desperate campaign. Hot bloods had cooled ; en- 
thusiasms had changed to complaints ; but the President 
and his general-in-chief seemed only just beginning to 
fight. Lincoln, after hearing Grant's plan of autumn 
campaign, said : " I am not much on military terms, but, 
as I understand it, you are to hold the leg while the other 
fellows take the skin off." 

In this homely simile was included the substance of 
Grant's campaigns for many months to come, and neither 
Lincoln nor the general himself had any fear of its trium- 



286 LIFE OF GRANT 

phant outcome, provided the people in the North stood 
by them poHtically. 

During the month of August Washington was again in 
a panic. It was feared that Lee had again despatched 
troops to reinforce Early in the Shenandoah Valley, for 
the purpose of making another raid across the Potomac. 
Even Lincoln became anxious, and telegraphed Grant to 
ask whether he had not better come himself. To this 
Grant replied, in substance : " I do not believe Lee has 
detached any considerable number of troops to go North. 
If he does, I will see that he is occupied where he is." 

However, finding it difficult to communicate with his 
forces in the Shenandoah, Grant decided to send General 
Sheridan to take charge of all the troops in that district, 
without regard to the rank of any man, and his orders 
were to put himself south of the Confederate forces, and 
follow them to the death. He knew Sheridan, and felt 
entirely satisfied that Early would ultimately be driven 
out of the Shenandoah Valley, or be destroyed. This, 
indeed, happened. Sheridan waited until the moment was 
favorable, then laid his plans before his chief. Grant 
said: "Go in." He went in, and defeated Early in one 
savage battle, and forever saved Washington from assault. 

Sherman, meanwhile, had taken Atlanta; and so again 
these two " Grant men " had brought victory to the nation 
at a time when the nation needed it most. These victories 
prepared the way for Lincoln's triumphant reelection. 
The whole atmosphere of the North cleared. It was at 
last understood that Grant was carrying forward the war 
on the lines which he had laid down a year before, upon 
taking command of all the armies in the field. All forces 
were moving now in unison. About this time he ex- 
pressed his own satisfaction with regard to the way things 
were taking shape in a letter to his father to the eflfect 
that all he asked was for Lee to stay where he was for a 
short time. 

At this moment began the actual working out of Sher- 
man's long-meditated march to the sea. Detaching Gen- 
eral Thomas to confront General Hood, " Old Tecump," 
spreading the wings of his desolating army, started on his 



THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 287 

way toward Savannah, cutting the Confederacy in half. 
This movement had arisen from the interaction of the 
minds of Sherman and Grant during the campaign in 
Georgia. Grant's idea at first had been to move on Mobile 
after the capture of Atlanta, but later he suggested mov- 
ing on Augusta ; and out of these suggestions came Sher- 
man's final determination to cut loose from his base of 
supplies, as Grant had done at Vicksburg, and to swing 
directly across the State to the coast. On the 15th of 
November, while the North was rejoicing over Lincoln's 
successful reelection, he was under way with sixty thou- 
sand men ; and Lee, powerless in the hands of Grant, could 
do nothing to impede the terrible progress of Sherman's 
army. 

This was indeed war. It was a strange lot which made 
General Grant— a man of gentlest nature— the terror of the 
South. From Donelson to Petersburg he had waged 
unremitting, single-purposed war. He meant to conquer, 
but his resolution was never bitter or revengeful. He 
pursued his course with the idea of a restored Union ever 
before his eyes; and though he chafed at delay, and at 
the need of political compromises, yet he never became 
soured or embittered. 

It was his policy not merely to hold Lee where he 
was, but to isolate him ; and so he crept slowly around to 
the left, reaching out like an encompassing wall to shut 
off the Confederate army from connection with the South. 
His progress was like that of some enormous, slow-moving 
serpent. 

In December General Thomas met Hood's army at 
Nashville, defeated it and almost destroyed it. Hood 
was on his way North, moved by a design somewhat simi- 
lar to that of Early in the Shenandoah Valley. This 
closed the heavy fighting for the winter, and the South 
made no more aggressive campaigns. So, day by day, 
the great game went on. General Grant, at City Point, 
the calm center of direction, manipulated his armies, while 
Lee sadly waited the inevitable end, and the Confederate 
Congress debated the question of arming the slaves. 
Davis, meanwhile, was being censured by a numerous 



288 LIFE OF GRANT 

party in the South for his military blunders and his mili- 
tary dictatorship. Dissension and dissolution had begun. 

During all these days of vexation, delay, multitudinous 
burdens, and malicious attack, General Grant, to those 
near him, remained the same gentle, self-contained, and 
masterful character. His headquarters were at City Point, 
a level strip of land which runs out into the broad conflu- 
ence of the Appomattox and the James. He lived for 
the first few months in a tent, as if on the march ; but 
around him a city sprang up, and the river grew populous 
with water-craft. Wharves, storehouses, railroad depots, 
eating-houses, barber-shops, and other business houses 
arose, while the call of stevedores and the shout of sailors 
made the shore ring with life, and trains rumbled to and 
fro carrying supplies to the army. Up on the breezy 
headland it was quiet and very pleasant, but inland, to- 
ward Petersburg, it was very hot during the long autumn 
days. In the line of rifle-pits which encircled the Con- 
federate city, the blue-coated soldiers sweltered in ill- 
concealed impatience, and waited for the cool days of 
November. 

If the army seemed idle, its general was not. An 
enormous amount of detail fell upon him during these 
months. His position was second only to that of Lincoln 
in the minds of both friends and enemies. Streams of 
people crowded to see him ; politicians pitched upon him ; 
critics assailed him; Generals Butler, Smith, and Warren 
gave him trouble ; and his life at City Point was one of 
never-ending harassment and responsibility. The War 
Department was also ready to find fault at any moment. 

But he never seemed worried or hurried. His mind 
seemed capable of any amount of work. He had a very 
remarkable power of concentration, of introspection, of 
carrying on a profound train of thought and yet being 
aware of all that went on near him. He paid no attention 
to any noise, scurry of business, or idle talking which did 
not interest him — seemingly, was deaf and blind ; but let 
a word be dropped which concerned things he should 
know, and he was alert. It was impossible to startle him 
— not because he was phlegmatic of temperament, but 



THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 289 

because his brain was so active and so comprehensive, it 
took up and accounted for every sound. He was not 
annoyed by trivial conversations during his own work, 
because he did not hear what he did not wish to hear. 

In the midst of all the bustle and suspense of enormous 
and complicated movement, he remained unimpatient and 
equable of temper, because of the absolute assurance which 
he had of his power to do the work in hand. There was 
nothing formal about his headquarters. He was not un- 
Uke the head of a great business firm, plain, abstracted in 
manner, unhesitating of action. It would not be true to 
say that he had not changed since the days of Donelson 
and Shiloh. He had come to be the commander in man- 
ner, although his commands were always quiet and with- 
out noise. He was never hasty, although some of his 
subordinates were hasty with him, notably Rawlins, who 
presumed at times upon his early acquaintance and the 
general's love for him. But even Rawlins knew that 
there was an impassable line between himself and his chief. 
There was a point beyond which he did not go. 

Self, with General Grant, was put entirely aside. His 
mind was wholly on his duties. Nothing was done for 
effect or for others to look at. His manner toward his 
subordinates was simple and direct. He never sent them 
on errands for his personal pleasure. He always greeted 
them quietly as he came in, and took his seat at his table 
as modestly as any clerk. When no one but the ofificers 
were about headquarters he often talked pleasantly and 
unaflfectedly with those seated around. But no one pre- 
sumed to pat him on the shoulder. His plainness and 
simplicity were accompanied by some intangible reserve 
which demanded respect, not as a chief of the armies, but 
as a human soul of innate dignity. His known weakness 
in regard to alcoholic stimulants could not destroy this. 

General Rawlins attended in large measure to the mere 
business details connected with the headquarters, but any 
letter written to General Grant reached him, and was read 
by him, and replied to in his own handwriting. If he could 
write a letter as quickly and as well as he could dictate, he 
preferred to write. It was no trouble for him to compose, 



290 LIFE OF GRANT 

and, beyond occasional mistakes in spelling and grammar, 
his letters were models of clearness and good taste. 

He waited upon himself whenever possible. He got 
his own mail at the adjutant's office, unless much occupied, 
and used to laugh at General Ingalls for keeping a darky 
to fan the flies off his bald head. He considered every 
man his equal, in a certain sense, though he insisted on 
having his orders strictly enforced. This, of course, he 
considered necessary ; but there was nothing in his man- 
ner to his humblest clerk which set him apart as a man of 
a different social position. Rawlins said of him : " I never 
knew General Grant to betray a want of confidence in 
those above him, nor to be drawn into any controversy by 
those under him." 

He never lolled about, and always spoke clearly and 
distinctly, but never loudly. He would walk across the 
intervening space rather than lift his voice to call to a 
subordinate. Equally, no man abashed him. He was 
serene in the presence of the greatest. He shirked no 
hardship, and was always on duty. He grew steadily 
greater in the opinion of those who were acute enough 
to perceive his greatness in spite of his modesty and 
simplicity. 

In the field he was precisely the same ; no display, no 
consciousness of being on exhibition. The staff-officer 
most prized by him was the one who did his work the 
quickest and with the least show. The men soon knew 
what was required of them, and, dropping all parade, 
became swift and businesslike in action. Occasionally a 
new man came on the staff full of military etiquette and 
display, but he soon fell in with the wishes of the chief. 
Grant liked his aides to bring him accurate reports with- 
out excitement ; and sometimes he mildly reproved them 
for showing undue emotion, knowing that such emotion 
would result in exaggeration of statement. 

As a result of all this, wherever General Grant was, 
there tranquillity reigned. His very look begat confidence 
and self-restraint. His headquarters were as peaceful as 
a church. Flies buzzed to the " scratch, scratch " of 
methodical pens at City Point, while cannon roared afar. 



THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 29 1 

No general ever did more of his own labor than General 
Grant. He toiled early and late. Often, after everybody 
but his telegraph-operator and the mail-clerk had gone to 
bed, he sat pondering over some problem. Often, after he 
retired, the clerk carrying a despatch to him would find 
him wide awake, waiting. His mind required that des- 
patch ; it filled some gap in his plans ; and upon receiving 
it he was enabled to close his eyes and fall asleep. 

He was much alone, and did his work alone. He was 
not crowded in the position which he occupied at this 
time. His subordinates were generally content to do as 
they were told, and stop there. In matters of exchange, 
in reading and writing telegrams, in discussions with 
the War Department, in watching Thomas in Tennessee, 
Canby on the Gulf, and Sherman in Georgia, the winter 
came. Butler's failure to capture Fort Fisher (and the 
reelection of Lincoln) had made it possible to relieve 
the " political general," who went North in the attempt to 
secure from the War Department reinstatement, in which 
he very naturally failed. 

Mrs. Grant came down and spent the winter with her 
husband at City Point, where a little slat house had been 
built for his accommodation in place of the tent, and there 
the Grants lived almost as simply and plainly as at Hard- 
scrabble, on the Gravois, in 1855. Many old friends 
from St. Louis, Galena, Georgetown, and Bethel came to 
see him and advise him what to do. It was impossible 
for most of them to realize that he was general of several 
hundred thousand armed men. They had no difficulty in 
reaching him ; in fact, he welcomed them as a relief from 
his military perplexities. They were amazed to find him 
the same man they had known in private life. He in- 
quired after their children by name, and wanted to know 
if it were true that Jane had married Tom, and that old 
Uncle Lowdermilk was dead. He knew every man, 
woman, and child in every small town in which he had 
ever lived, and seemed to be eager to know how they 
were all getting along. So plain and neighborly was he 
that his visitors departed with a sense of disappointment, 
not to say bewilderment. 



292 LIFE OF GRANT 

He was altogether too simple and transparent. They 
would have better enjoyed the deep thunder of a martial 
voice, the imperative clap of bells, the swift spring of 
saluting aides. They were troubled in some cases with the 
conviction that " Ulyss Grant was not so much of a gen- 
eral, after all," and that their advice might come in handy 
with him before the war was done. They told the folks 
at home that Ulyss was mighty glad to see them and talk 
things over with them, and they did n't see how in the 
world he ever come to get in that position, anyhow. It 
was just his darn luck. 

His courtesy was unfailing, even in the midst of the 
most eventful periods. He seemed always to have time 
for certain of his friends when they came. In fact, he 
never seemed hurried. At the very time that Sherman 
was calling for reinforcements, when General Early was 
menacing Washington, and the siege of Petersburg was 
demanding the most absorbed and wakeful attention, he 
wrote in reply to a young school-girl in Washington, 
acknowledging the gift of a smoking-cap in terms of 
serene pleasantry. The saucy girl had said that he was 
not to wear the cap until after he had taken Richmond. 
To this he readily agreed, and said that it would not be 
very long, either. 

President Lincoln came down often, and was accustomed 
to drop in at headquarters without warning, remove his 
hat, and say, " Good morning, gentlemen," quite as if he 
were a member of the office force. Upon entering, he 
usually took a seat at the long table which stood in the 
middle of the office. There, stretching his long legs out 
at their full length, he composed himself for a comfortable 
neighborly chat. He was usually inclined to tell stories, 
and joke, seeming to enjoy a moment's escape from his 
great burden. He very evidently rested securely upon 
his great general's calmness and certainty of power. He 
comprehended the plan ; he approved of it and had faith 
in the ultimate victory of the Northern army. It is a trib- 
ute to the purity of Grant's life that Lincoln never told 
coarse stories in his presence. He respected Grant's 
hatred of wit at the expense of women. 



THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 293 

The general was no gossip. He never made remarks in 
criticism of a visitor after the visitor had left, and by his 
manner always showed an objection to hearing others talk 
about people " behind their backs." He disliked a show of 
secrecy, and often stopped some one who began a whis- 
pered conversation by making his own replies in a loud 
voice, which became ludicrous to bystanders and embar- 
rassing to the offending person. 

He kept up his reading of the newspapers, and seemed 
not to be disturbed by criticism. He kept his troubles to 
himself. He had no small talk to amuse people with, but 
he sought relaxation occasionally in talk of horses and 
farming. This gave rise to the statement by some cor- 
respondents that Grant was an active horse-jockey, but a 
mighty indolent general of armies. He was always rea- 
sonably neat of outer dress and scrupulously clean of linen, 
but he had no time to spend in ceremonial dressing. He 
wore one suit morning, noon, and night. His horse was 
always smooth as silk, and his trappings in order. 

He was a man of great sensitiveness in unexpected 
directions. He could not bear the sight of blood. Raw 
steak disgusted him. Suffering appealed to him so keenly 
tliat he could not look on the wounded of a battle-field; 
he shuddered and averted his face. He could not endure 
to see an animal abused, and the two occasions when he 
lost his temper show his chivalry and gentleness. Once 
he came upon a soldier insulting a woman, and with a 
sudden rush he felled the miscreant with a clubbed musket. 
The second instance was in the Wilderness campaign, 
when he came upon a teamster beating a horse most 
cruelly. For a "butcher" and a "bulldog" these are 
curious traits. 

As a commander his most marked characteristics were 
measureless persistence, swift and unhesitant action, calm 
mastery of details, considerateness in the treatment of 
subordinates, courage to assume responsibility, and beyond 
and perhaps above all, the capacity to do, in the heat and 
tumult of war, things so conspicuously right that when 
the battle is ended they seem to have been inspired by a 
miraculous common sense. 



294 LIFE OF GRANT 

In these winter days, also, the peace-loving men and 
women of both sections moved for a compromise which 
should end the war. A commission was appointed by the 
Confederate States, and on the last day of January its 
members presented themselves on the Union lines about 
Petersburg, and were immediately conducted to General 
Grant's headquarters. They proved to be Alexander H. 
Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, the Hon. 
J. A. Campbell, Assistant Secretary of War, and Senator 
R. M. T. Hunter. 

General Grant made them comfortable, and informed 
the President and Stanton of their presence and their 
object, which was to negotiate a peace between the United 
States and, as they termed it, the Confederate government. 
Grant did not admit their claims to a government, and 
had no dealings with them. He informed Stanton, how- 
ever, that he believed their intentions were good, but that 
he did not feel at liberty to express views of his own, 
neither could he account to them for his reticence. His 
position was awkward, but there was no help for it. He 
ended by expressing the wish that President Lincoln 
should meet the commissioners within the Union lines. 

This wish Lincoln determined to gratify. Accompanied 
by Secretary Seward, he went to the front and met the 
Southern commissioners. For four hours the talk lasted, 
and ended without result. The Southern men were not 
yet ready to submit, and Lincoln and Grant were never 
further from any compromise. They were fighting for 
two fundamental demands: first, that the Union should 
be maintained ; and second, that slavery should forever be 
abolished from the land. Neither the President nor his 
chief for one instant thought of accepting less, and the 
commission withdrew, while Grant tightened his hold on 
Lee's army, and Sherman continued his desolating advance 
through the Carolinas. War with Grant was constant and 
inexorable advance. 

In fulfilling these plans Sherman's star rose each day 
higher, till he absorbed the attention of the nation, and 
Grant, while not forgotten, was less studied and less men- 
tioned by the press, for which he was, no doubt, grateful. 



THE SULLEN SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 295 

There was something superbly dramatic and audacious in 
the march of Sherman's army through the enemy's coun- 
try, now lost to sight, now reappearing in the blaze of 
some captured city, while Grant apparently lay dozing at 
Petersburg; therefore it was that Sherman became almost 
equal in national importance, and, in the eyes of Grant's 
ready critics, came at last to be the really great and only 
commander of the Northern army. Sherman was no 
longer the " crazy man " ; he was " Tecumsey the Great." 
To the South he was " Attila the Scourge." 

But there were those who perceived that Sherman was 
the lash in Grant's controlling fist. There were those 
who perceived that in Grant's mind lay the simple but 
stupendous plan which made of Sherman one of three 
converging armies whose center was Lee and Richmond. 
For months Grant and Lee had stood like two prodigious 
wrestlers, locked in a stern embrace. Each had been able 
to hold his own, but neither had been able to move the 
other. Lee was behind fortifications which Grant could 
not storm. Grant held positions from which Lee had not 
been able to rout him. Lee's fortifications were a neces- 
sity ; Grant's were only an expediency. 

Grant, however, had not merely held Lee thus securely 
intrenched, but had sent three great armies crashing 
through the Confederacy at his will. He had swept the 
Mississippi Valley clean of any considerable force. Thomas 
had destroyed Hood's army ; Sheridan had beaten and 
forever scattered Early's forces ; Schofield, after a success- 
ful campaign against Wilmington, had joined Sherman. 
With these plans in his mind and these forces in his hand. 
Grant could afford to pay no attention whatever to the 
critics of his government. 

Had his been an envious soul or a narrow mind, he 
would have been fired with jealousy of Sherman ; but envy 
had no place in his nature. He was jubilant when the 
news of Sherman's success reached him, and when a 
movement was started in the North to present Sherman 
with some testimonial. Grant, in answer to a printed letter 
inviting his cooperation, replied saying he had just written 
to his father at Covington, asking him to start a subscrip- 



296 LIFE OF GRANT 

tion to present to Mrs. Sherman a furnished house in Cin- 
cinnati. " I directed my father to start the subscription 
with five hundred dollars from me, and two hundred and 
fifty dollars from General Ingalls. 1 cannot say a word 
too highly in praise of General Sherman's service from the 
beginning of the Rebellion to the present day." 

" It is the greatest march in history," said Grant. " No 
other man but Sherman could have marched so far in an 
enemy's country, and be stronger at the finish than at the 
start. He is a greater general than I am." 

Nothing could set these two men against each other. 
Sherman knew Grant's far-reaching mind and steadfast 
purpose, and he went his conquering way, confident that 
his chief had an ever- watchful eye for his welfare. He 
knew Grant would keep Lee busy, and see the old Army 
of the Tennessee safely through. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 

DURING all these quiet winter months those best in- 
formed were aware of great plans forming in the 
mind of General Grant, although no one, not even his 
staff, knew what they were in detail. The soothsayers of 
the land anticipated the " breaking forth of a terrific storm 
of war" as soon as the roads became passable for cavalry 
and cannon, and in this they were quite right. The final 
movement was near at hand. 

On the twenty-eighth day of March, in the after-cabin of 
the River Queen, at City Point, the three chief actors in 
the mighty drama of that day were gathered together. 
Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln had met to discuss the situ- 
ation, and their meeting had immense significance. Sher- 
man's army was safe at the coast. Grant was steadily 
pushing his lines round Lee to the west. All things were 
ready. The moment might be well termed historical. 
General Sherman, tall, thin, and nervous, formed the rest- 
less spirit of the group. Lincoln, sitting low in his chair, 
with his long legs draped alternately over each other, 
studied his two great chieftains with eyes which alternately 
gleamed and glowed. Grant, compact, self-contained, 
and silent, was the pivot round which the talk ran. To 
him every question was ultimately referred. 

After one of Sherman's rapid, fiery speeches, the Presi- 
dent turned his slightly smiling face toward Grant, and 
asked him to explain his plans covering that point. 

Grant replied : " At this moment Sheridan is crossing 
the James River from the north by a pontoon-bridge below 

297 



298 LIFE OF GRANT 

City Point. I have a large and well-appointed force of 
cavalry with which I propose to strike the South Side and 
Danville railways. These are the only roads left over 
which Lee can supply his army. I intend to continue my 
movement to the left until Lee is entirely cut off from the 
Confederacy. He will be obliged to either surrender or 
abandon Richmond. If he comes out of his lines to fight, 
I shall whip him. My only fear is that he will slip away 
to join Johnston in the South. I shall start with no dis- 
tinct view other than to prevent Lee from following Sheri- 
dan ; but I shall be along myself, and take advantage of 
anything that turns up." 

Sherman smiled joyously. " Let him join Johnston, if 
he wishes. My army at Goldsboro is strong enough to 
whip him and Johnston combined, provided General Grant 
can come up in a day or two. If Lee will remain at 
Richmond another week, I can march to Burkeville, and 
Lee will starve inside his own lines, or come out and fight 
us." 

Lincoln looked thoughtful. " How many men has Lee ? " 

Grant replied : " I estimate his available force at sixty- 
five thousand, but great numbers are deserting." 

Lincoln seemed to think that in Lee's army the spirit of 
battle still remained, and he asked sorrowfully : 

" Can we not end this thing without another battle ? 
Is it necessary that more blood be shed? " 

Grant and Sherman both felt that one more bloody bat- 
tle must be fought, but that would be the last. 

Lincoln again exclaimed : " There has been blood 
enough shed! We must avoid another battle." 

" We cannot control that," replied Sherman. " That 
rests with the enemy. If they attack, we must whip them. 
Davis and Lee will be forced to fight one more desperate 
battle. I think it will fall on me somewhere near Raleigh." 

Grant then said : " If Lee will wait where he is for a few 
days, I will have my army so disposed that if he attempts 
to join Johnston I will be at his heels, and he cannot 
escape." 

Lincoln was profoundly excited by the plans of his 
great generals. The end of the war seemed at hand, but 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 299 

the fear of another day of carnage kept lodgment in his 
mind. He longed for peace with the heart of a woman. 
He would have accepted almost any terms at that moment. 
But Grant, calm, gentle, but inflexible, supplied the 
undeviating and dispassionate purpose of the war. His 
mind was with Sheridan's troops, filing in long streams of 
faded blue and flashing steel across the James River. 
Even as the three men talked. Grant's great plans were 
being executed by those who knew the " old commander " 
was sending them to victory. Stoneman's cavalry was 
pushing into West Virginia ; Wilson was on the way ; 
Canby was in action in the South. 

Grant had determined to close the war at once. 
Sherman returned to his troops, and two days later, under 
the chief's immediate command, the Army of the Potomac 
began a momentous shifting of ground. The men looked 
into each others' faces with shining eyes. Movement 
meant victory ; they were done with waiting. The " old 
man's" plans had ripened. Now for a short and sharp 
campaign, and then home and happiness! Even the 
men left in the trenches were ordered to keep face steadily 
to the west. The final closing in was begun. 

Sheridan moved out in advance as soon as artillery could 
be moved. Division after division was withdrawn, and, 
filing behind, the extreme left took new position, extend- 
ing the line by so many miles. It was like the movement 
of a monstrous serpent — the same menacing and terrifying 
movement which had begun on the Rapidan. Sheridan 
was soon on his road to Five Forks, with instructions to 
menace Lee's extreme right, and to draw out, defeat, and 
flank the gray men at that point. 

The Richmond papers kept up a loud-sounding promise 
of victory ; but Lee knew all too well the kind of man he 
had to deal with. His soldierly perception was sharpened, 
not dulled, by Grant's apparent inactivity. He hurried to 
the right wing of his army in person, hoping in some way 
to defeat the " hammerer's " designs. He also reinforced 
his line at that point, and met Sheridan at Five Forks with 
desperate courage. 

Sheridan, tardily reinforced by General Warren, moved 



300 LIFE OF GRANT 

to the assault with characteristic fire and force, and at 
dusk on the night of the ist of April sent his men over 
the parapets of the enemy, capturing six thousand prisoners 
and much artillery and small arms. The " little general " 
followed the flying enemy in person until nine o'clock at 
night. He then halted his troops, and himself rode back 
to Five Forks to dispose of the remaining part of his 
command in face of the enemy. 

The chief smiled when this news came to him. " Good! 
good!" he said. Then he let loose the majesty of his 
whole army. The cannon opened from one end of the 
line to the other. General Weitzel, on the north side of 
the James River, was ordered to advance his forces to 
menace the city of Richmond, and to enter if troops were 
withdrawn. Orders were given to Wright and Parke to 
assault Petersburg for the last time at four o'clock in 
the morning. General Humphreys and General Ord of 
the Army of the James, who occupied the south side of the 
river, were to move upon the enemy at the very moment 
they saw the lines weakened. Nothing the great com- 
mander had ever done was more orderly, more impressive, 
more inexorable. It was war on a mighty scale. It was 
an attempt to ensnare, not to defeat, an army. 

At four o'clock, with a sudden redoubling of cannonad- 
ing, the blue-clad columns moved to the assault. Parke 
and Wright moved out of their works, and advanced under 
a desolating artillery fire from the enemy, and went 
steadily on, sweeping the abatis from their front, on and 
on till they mounted the parapets, and threw themselves 
within the enemy's outer lines, and turned them against 
the inner redoubts. They swept this exterior line clear of 
gray-coats, and captured nearly three thousand prisoners. 

At the same hour Ord and Humphreys had moved for- 
ward upon other outer lines of intrenchments. They, too, 
were carried. When the news from all the points reached 
Grant, he mounted his horse, and rode to the front to 
join the troops inside the fortifications of the city. He 
wanted to " be along " " to see what turned up." 

General Lee made the most desperate efforts to regain 
his line of outer works. He sent his brave men again and 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 3OI 

again against the blue-coated ranks. But in vain ; the con- 
ditions were changed. His troops were in the open, 
Grant's intrenched. He could do nothing but waste his 
men. Longstreet, one of his most tremendous fighters, 
was ordered up from his position in defense of Richmond 
against Weitzel — the last resource of a desperate com- 
mander. Grant smiled again when he heard this — a slow, 
significant smile, without ferocity, the smile of a man 
whose eyes are full of thought. He ordered Weitzel to 
watch his chance, and when he saw an opening to go in 
and possess the city. 

The people of Richmond heard the sound of cannon on 
that Sabbath morning, but, like the people of Vicksburg, 
they had grown accustomed to " Grant's pyrotechnic dis- 
plays," and ate breakfast in comparative security, trusting 
all to General Lee. While Lee's men died uselessly, these 
citizens made ready for church, the ladies donning such 
finery as they had retained ; and at about the hour when 
Lee, haggard with misery, was uncovering Richmond by 
ordering Longstreet to report at Petersburg, the churches 
were filling up with a leisurely and stately moving throng, 
mostly ladies. It was impossible that Lee should ever be 
beaten or captured! 

In St. Paul's Church was the largest and finest assem- 
blage, for Jefferson Davis worshiped there. The seats 
were filled. The hymn was given out, and the rustling 
hymn-book leaves were fluttering, when a messenger 
slipped up the aisle and handed a despatch to President 
Davis. It sent the blood back upon his heart, and a look 
that awed his people came into his face ; and well it might. 
The message was from Lee : " The enemy has broken my 
line in three places. Richmond must be evacuated to- 
night." Davis read it, rose quietly and walked out, then 
hurried to his office to give orders removing the seat of 
government to Danville. This doomful news passed from 
lip to lip, and a reign of flame and terror began in Rich- 
mond. 

General Ewell, commanding the city, ordered the ware- 
houses to be burned. He fired all the shipping in the 
river, and blew up all the rams, whose explosion reached 



302 LIFE OF GRANT 

the ears of General Wright. This conflagration set at 
work by Ewell ate the heart out of Richmond, and the 
smoke ascending to the sky told the Union troops of the 
desperate condition of the city. The people went insane 
with fear and excitement ; flight began, and the worse 
element of the streets began to plunder and destroy. At 
eight o'clock the following morning General Weitzel 
entered the city, followed by negro troops singing, with 
characteristic frenzy of joy, their great marching chorus : 

John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on! 

Down at Petersburg, Grant was with Meade, superin- 
tending the battle with Lee, who tried again and again to 
beat back the encroaching blue wall, all to no purpose. 
Sheridan came sweeping in from the west, and joined 
Meade on the left, thus making a continuous battle-line, 
which half inclosed the city. Grant, having all this under 
his eyes, ordered the cannon to open at sunrise, to be fol- 
lowed by a grand assault an hour later. Before the sun 
rose Lee gave up the fight and evacuated the city, starting 
on his retreat to join Johnston. 

Grant entered Petersburg so close on the flying troops 
of Lee that he could have turned his cannon upon the 
packed masses of the disorganized regiments ; but he had 
not the heart to do so ; he wished to meet his enemy in the 
front. It was not his design to follow Lee, but to head 
him ofl', and he had already given orders to Sheridan to 
move out along the south side of the Appomattox River, 
and reach the Danville road in advance of Lee. The 
ever-ready Sheridan had replied, saying : " My troops are 
nine miles on the road already." And so the whole army 
began to extend like a vast snare with intent to secure a 
fleeing mass of gray-coated men. 

It was all so simple, yet so immense. Sheridan, whom 
the chief loved like a son, and whom he trusted as he 
trusted his own right arm, was sent in advance to check 
Lee's foremost columns, while General Grant himself re- 
mained with Ord at the center, to be in readiness for any 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 303 

doubling of his desperate enemy. Meade was to hang on 
the enemy's flank. 

Grant telegraphed Lincoln to meet him at Petersburg, 
which his own troops had evacuated in their pitiless pur- 
suit of the fleeing enemy. Grant was alone with a few 
stafT-officers when Lincoln arrived. The meeting took 
place on the veranda of a deserted house, and was not 
without its humorous word on Lincoln's part. 

" Do you know, general," he said, " I had a sort of 
sneaking idea for some days you were going to do some- 
thing like this!" 

Grant smiled at the phrase " sneaking idea," for he had 
concealed from the President the real form of his final 
movement, wishing to spare him all disappointment. He 
now opened all his plans. With a certain delicacy of 
sentiment, he had refrained from calling in the Western 
troops, because he wished the Army of the Potomac to 
have the honor of capturing Richmond and Lee, if possi- 
ble, without outside aid. He feared ill feeling and bicker- 
ing to follow between the leaders of the East and West in 
Congress. All this he explained in answer to Lincoln's 
question concerning Sherman's cooperation. 

Lincoln replied : " I see that now, but I had not thought 
of it before. My anxiety to end the war has been so great 
that I did not care where the aid came from." 

With a hearty " God bless you ! " the President mounted 
his horse and rode back to City Point, while Grant, with- 
out entering Richmond, with scarcely a glance in its direc- 
tion, galloped to the west to keep pace with his army 
center; and so to a subordinate was given the honor of 
entering the rebel capital and its presidential mansion. 

The jubilant Union army was marching without rations, 
and straight into the enemy's country ; but that did not 
matter. " Richmond is taken; this is the last campaign," 
they said, and so they had no fear of what was to follow. 
They felt sure of ending Lee's career almost before the 
need of further rations. The " old man " was along, and 
things always moved where he was. The men sang and 
shouted and laughed, and made prodigious marches with- 
out complaint, almost in a frenzy of delight. The roads 



304 LIFE OF GRANT 

were very bad, but they were as bad for the enemy ; 
rations were as hard to get for the men in gray as for the 
men in blue. And so the swift and tireless pursuit 
went on. 

" The armies of the South are now our strategic points," 
Grant wrote to Sherman, and pushed on, intent on throw- 
ing sufficient force between Lee and Burkeville on the 
Danville road to stop him and bring him to bay. Sheri- 
dan and Meade joined at Jetersville, confronting Lee, who 
was at Amelia Court-house, and Grant was still riding with 
Ord on the left. When he came into camp, after being all 
day on horseback, two soldiers in rebel uniform were 
brought in as prisoners. They said they wished to see the 
commanding general, and were immediately brought be- 
fore Grant. 

They proved to be Union soldiers from Sheridan's 
army, disguised as rebels. They had come through the 
enemy's lines to avoid a long detour. One of them took 
from his mouth a quid of tobacco in which was a small 
pellet of tin-foil. This, when opened, was found to con- 
tain a note from Sheridan, written on tissue-paper, saying: 
" It is of the utmost importance for the success of the 
movement now being made that you come at once to 
these headquarters. Meade has given his part of the 
army orders to move in such a manner that Lee may 
break through and escape." 

Grant ordered a fresh horse, and set off at once, without 
even waiting for a cup of coffee. Although Sheridan's 
headquarters were not more than ten miles away, the gen- 
eral had to make a wide detour around the rebel lines, rid- 
ing nearly thirty miles in addition to his day's journey. 
He was challenged by pickets, and had great difficulty in 
getting through the lines, and was forced to pick his way 
among sleeping soldiers bivouacked in the open field. 

He reached Sheridan about midnight. He was awake, 
waiting, and very anxious. He explained in a few vigor- 
ous words the situation. Meade had given him orders to 
move on the right flank and cover Richmond. This, Sheri- 
dan said, would exactly open the door for Lee to escape. 
Meade's fear was that by uncovering Richmond Lee would 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 305 

get into our rear and trouble our communications. Sheri- 
dan's idea was to move on the west flank, leave Richmond 
and the communications to take care of themselves, and to 
swing between Lee and the road to Johnston, and press 
and attack the Confederates wherever found. 

Meade had misinterpreted Grant's plan. The question 
was not the occupation of Richmond, but the destruction 
of Lee's army. 

The general started to find Meade, who was ailing and 
in bed. He was very cordial, and began talking about the 
next day's march and the route he had laid down. Grant 
listened a moment, then said: " I do not approve of your 
march. I do not want Richmond so much as Lee. Rich- 
mond is only a collection of houses ; Lee is an active force. 
Your business is not to follow Lee, but to head him off"." 

He took out his pencil, and wrote an order countermand- 
ing Meade's orders, and directing the whole force to have 
coffee at four o'clock, and move on the left flank. He 
handed it to Meade, and said : " You have no time to lose." 

Meade loyally went to work, and his next movement 
threw the Union forces between Lee and the Carolinas, 
and the battle of Sailor's Creek took place next day. No 
single act of Grant's whole career was more vigorous, more 
important, and more soldierly than this midnight ride of 
thirty miles in an enemy's country without guard. It was 
the power to do this, and the perception to understand the 
need of promptness, that made Grant the general that he 
was. This ride had something of the old-time heroism in it. 

There was no danger of Lee's swinging to the left. He 
was retreating with all the skill he could bring to bear, and 
fought only when forced to do so. He was obliged to 
cross the Danville road without meeting his provision- 
trains, for Sheridan's advance-guard had sent them all 
back down the line. 

The gray men were hungry and muddy and weary, but 
they were unconquerable of spirit. They continued their 
flight, and Grant's pursuing columns pushed forward once 
again to intercept them or bring them to bay. They 
marched on into the night, although they had been a week 
without rest. 



306 LIFE OF GRANT 

At Farmville the chief entered the tavern, scarcely yet 
emptied of its Confederate guests of the night before. He 
was satisfied the fight was out of Lee's army, and so 
opened correspondence with Lee, who was only a few 
miles away. He conveyed to Lee his opinion that further 
struggle was a wanton waste of life, and called for the 
surrender of the Confederate troops under his command. 
The great net was spread and closing around the remnants 
of Lee's disorganized army. Sheridan, with Ord, had 
pushed on to the front with tremendous celerity, pausing 
scarcely to eat or sleep, and was closing in on the Confed- 
erate front. Meade was holding the rear ranks securely, 
and Grant himself was directing Humphreys in his pressure 
against Lee's immediate command. His orders to Ord and 
Sheridan were vigorous and jubilant. 

After writing his letter to Lee, Grant strolled about the 
village a little, and then went back to the tavern. He was 
not at all well. A derangement of the stomach, combined 
with the intense nervous strain of the week's fighting and 
pursuit, had given him a blinding headache. As the night 
fell he sat on the little piazza of the inn, leaning over the 
rail, and gazing over and beyond the marching troops 
whose endless stream filled the streets. 

He was at his greatest that night, absorbed, intent, re- 
lentless, his face set like granite. His staff stood apart 
from him, almost in awe. " Oh, what a night that was!" 
exclaimed Colonel Webster. " The * old man * was wonder- 
ful." Occasionally some officer in the passing troops would 
recognize the somber, dreaming face above the railing, and 
his salute would start a roaring cheer among the men. 
But the chief gave no sign of approval or disapproval. He 
did not seem to hear the salute. He was exteriorly with- 
out evidence of pride or exultation. He showed no anxiety 
either, but he was in deep thought. He knew the pursuit 
must end soon, for he was marching away from his sup- 
plies, whereas Lee was marching toward his strongholds 
and his granaries. Should the pursuit last three days 
longer, the Union forces must halt and feed themselves. 

But the swift and sturdy Sheridan had reported himself 
and his forces at last directly in Lee's advance, and de- 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 307 

serters had informed him, also, how desperate was the 
situation of the Confederate forces. It was impossible for 
Lee to escape ; his campaigns were ended. Sheridan was 
as sleepless as his chief; nothing escaped him. Lee's 
precious supply-trains were turned back or destroyed. 
Every advancing column of gray found every lane filled 
with Union cavalry. 

And yet, when Grant's letter came to Lee he could not 
bring himself to surrender. He played a double game. 
He approached the disingenuous in his reply. He played 
for time by asking the terms of surrender, and suggested 
a meeting to decide upon terms. 

To his letter Grant replied, while still at Farmville : 
" Peace being my greatest desire, there is but one condi- 
tion I would insist upon; namely, that men and officers 
surrendered shall be disqualified from taking up arms 
against the United States until properly exchanged." 

Though Grant believed Lee to be meditating surrender, 
and though he sent such word to Sheridan, he neglected 
no precaution. " We will push him until the terms are 
agreed upon," he added to Sheridan, who said, in reply: 
" If General Gibbon and the Fifth Corps get up to-night, 
we will perhaps finish the job in the morning. I do not 
think that Lee means to surrender until compelled to do so." 

That night General Grant stayed at a farm-house. He 
was suffering increased pain. His hard week's campaign- 
ing, the intense anxiety and sleepless mental activity, had 
told upon him. He was a very injudicious eater, and his 
stomach was his weak point. He ate very little, — too 
little, in fact, — but he was quite as apt to eat pickles and 
cake, mingled with cream and vinegar and lettuce, as he 
was to take more wholesome foods. If his wife cried out 
against it, he merely smiled and said : " Let them fight it 
out down there." Such lack of care had often brought 
about indigestion ; and now, when he was most needed, 
when he was at the most critical point of this pursuit, he 
was forced to go to bed with mustard-plasters on his wrist 
and at the base of his brain. 

But he was by no means out of the fight. Sick as he 
was, he was not to be caught napping by Lee's second 



308 LIFE OF GRANT 

letter, in which he said, " To be frank, I don't think the 
emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this 
army," but added that he would be pleased to meet Gen- 
eral Grant at lo A. M. 
Grant replied : 

I have no authority to treat on the subject of peace. The 
meeting proposed for lo a. m. to-day would do no good. ... I 
will state, however, general, that I am equally anxious for peace 
with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same feeling. 
The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood ; 
by the South laying down their arms they will hasten that most 
desirable event, save thousands of human lives and hundreds and 
hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed. Sincerely 
hoping that all our difficulties may be settled without the loss of 
another life, etc. 

This letter, confused and inelegant as it was, conveyed 
a most sincere and humane desire to avoid further fight- 
ing, and was not without adroitness. It conveyed to Lee 
the inflexible purpose of its writer. Any further bloodshed 
was certainly to be laid to Lee's own selfish pride. There 
was but one thing to be done — to bow the head to the will 
of the God of progress. 

Lee called a council of war that night, the 8th of April, 
and read the correspondence of General Grant. Around 
the camp-fire gathered the members of his staff, including 
Generals Longstreet, Fitzhugh Lee, and Gordon. There 
Lee presented the situation quietly, somberly, and dispas- 
sionately. He said: "I am averse to surrendering, but 
the situation demands it. It cannot be avoided. My de- 
sire is now to avoid any further bloodshed." 

Some of the younger men of the council did not share 
the depth of his discouragement, and after some delibera- 
tion General Gordon was selected to lead a desperate as- 
sault on Sheridan's cavalry and open a way of escape. It 
was a forlorn hope, but it put off the hour of surrender, and 
with some reluctance Lee assented, even though his letters 
to Grant had conveyed a different intention. 

"Do you think you can cut your way through?" he 
asked. 




U. S. Grant early in 1865, near the close of the war, age 43 years. 
From a spoiled negative. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 309 

" Yes," replied Gordon ; " I can force a passage through 
any number of cavalry." 

This assault took place ; but when General Gordon was 
congratulating himself that he was making way, the cavalry 
suddenly parted in the middle and rolled back like a cur- 
tain, and there, ranked, ready, and menacing, stood the 
Army of the James, under command of Ord, a wall of blue 
with a crest of steel, impenetrable and insuperable. 

The worn, hungry, muddy, and desperate men in gray 
grounded their arms, and looked at one another in silence. 
Grant's army had outmarched them on longer lines — had 
surrounded them. The flag of truce must go up now, or 
the Army of Northern Virginia break up in tumbled heaps 
on a bloody field. 

Gordon sent a despairing despatch to General Lee, say- 
ing: " Unless Longstreet comes up at once, all is lost." 

Lee replied in a singular note, saying: " There is a flag 
of truce in existence between me and General Grant. You 
can take your own course about notifying the officer in 
command of the forces on your front," — by which it would 
seem he had ceased to send direct orders to General 
Gordon. 

Meanwhile General Grant had received word from the 
Confederate general-in-chief expressing willingness to treat 
for surrender. This word cured Grant of his sick-headache 
at once. He threw it off as quickly as he might have 
thrown off his hat, and hastened to the front. He found 
Sheridan's troops drawn up in line of battle and facing the 
enemy near by. The men were deeply excited, and the 
subordinate officers were riding to and fro wildly. Men and 
officers alike wanted to go in and finish the business right 
then, for they feared the truce to be a mere trick to gain 
time. 

Grant had greater reason than any of them knew to be- 
lieve it a trick, but he was too sure of his power to refuse 
this chance. He rode through the lines toward the 
enemy, and on to the place where the Confederate leader 
was waiting to meet him. Lee, accompanied by Colonel 
Marshall of his staff, had been seated for some time in a 
near-by farm-house, a plain brick cottage with a veranda. 



3IO LIFE OF GRANT 

It was owned by a man named McLean, who was walk- 
ing distractedly about, dazed and helpless with the sudden 
weight of war which was thrust upon him. 

When General Grant entered, the room was partly filled 
by his own officers ; but on one side of the room General 
Lee sat in silence, with Colonel Marshall, his secretary, 
near him. General Lee's face was pale, but impassible. 
What his thoughts were no one could tell. He looked 
like a man who had failed of a high purpose, but accepted 
his failure with philosophic resignation. He was clad in 
a new suit, and looked like an officer prepared for grand 
review. His sword, gloves, boots, all showed great care 
and good taste. His gray full beard was trimmed and his 
hair in perfect order. He had in him something of the old 
cavalier, who met death well-ordered and debonair. 

General Grant, without pausing, walked directly toward 
him, and Lee rose, and the two men shook hands. Grant 
spoke of the Mexican War, and of the curious fact that he 
had not seen General Lee since that time. 

As they stood talking thus. Grant's officers looked at 
each other significantly. Their chief was a most violent 
contrast to the Southern leader. He was considerably 
shorter, and his bearing quite unmilitary. He was splashed 
with mud, and his trousers were tucked into his boots. 
He wore the uniform of a private soldier, with the straps 
of lieutenant-general sewed to the shoulders. He was 
haggard from his recent illness and the strain of a week's 
hard riding. He needed the testimony of all his sub- 
ordinates to verify his identity with the " remorseless 
Hun" and the "scientific Alaric " of the Southern press. 
Without doubt, Lee was amazed, but his face, almost as 
sphinx-like as Grant's, gave no outward sign. 

The most marked expression of General Grant was his 
kindness. His reluctance to introduce the distressing pur- 
pose of the meeting was evident. He conveyed by his 
whole manner such delicacy of sympathy, and such marked 
desire not to humiliate his late foes unnecessarily, that 
one of his subordinates asked of another: "Who 's sur- 
rendering here, anyhow?" Grant himself said: "I had 
been quite jubilant on the receipt of General Lee's letter " ; 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 3 II 

but he was now sad, out of the kindness and almost wo- 
manly sympathy of his nature. He was eager to finish up 
the surrender in such wise as not to add to the painful 
dejection of the Southern men. 

" The conversation grew so pleasant that he almost for- 
got the object of the meeting." General Lee called his 
attention to the purpose of their coming together, which 
was to get from General Grant the terms he proposed to 
give to the Southern army. He suggested that the terms 
be reduced to writing. 

General Grant then called Colonel Ely Parker of his 
staff, and asked him to bring a small table which stood at 
the opposite side of the room. This was done, and Gen- 
eral Grant then wrote in pencil the terms of the surrender, 
and took it to General Lee, who remained seated. Thus 
the victor went to the vanquished in the manner of a con- 
siderate younger man. There was no thought of military 
etiquette in his mind. 

In the final paragraph of this first draft was written these 
words : " The arms, artillery, and public property to be 
parked and stacked and turned over to the officer appointed 
by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side- 
arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. 
This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return 
to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States 
authority so long as they observe their parole and the laws 
in force where they reside." 

General Lee, reading this simple, direct, and kindly 
letter, seemed moved by its generosity, and said : " This 
will have a most happy effect upon my army." He re- 
ferred particularly to the part covering the release of all 
claim upon the horses of the cavalrymen, which were the 
private property of their riders. By the generous fore- 
sight of General Grant, they could now ride their horses 
back to their farms, and use them in their spring work. 

The terms of the letter having been agreed upon. Gen- 
eral Grant directed Colonel Parker, a member of his staff, 
to make a copy of it in ink. While this was being done 
he turned to General Sheridan and said : " General Sheri- 
dan, General Lee tells me that he has some twelve thou- 



312 LIFE OF GRANT 

sand of our people prisoners, who are sharing with the 
men, and that none of them have anything to eat. How 
many rations can you spare? " 

Sheridan replied: "About twenty-five thousand." 

Grant turned to Lee. " General Lee, will that be 
enough? " 

" More than enough," replied Lee. 

" Very well. General Sheridan, direct your commissary 
to send twenty-five thousand rations to General Lee's 
commissary." 

When the letters had been copied in ink, and signed, 
the two men rose, and a little general conversation again 
took place, in the course of which General Grant apolo- 
gized for his dress, remarking that his wagons were behind, 
and that he had not wished to detain General Lee while 
he sent back for them. General Lee seemed to accept 
this in the spirit in which it was spoken, and the two 
leaders shook hands and parted. 

As Lee passed out Grant's aides respectfully rose. Lee 
did not appear to notice them. As he stood on the steps 
waiting for his horse, he looked away for an instant over 
the green valley, and " smote his hands together again and 
again in an absent and despairing way." When his horse 
came up he mounted and returned to his lines. 

Far back in the Western town of Galena, in 1861, an 
obscure country editor had said of a still more obscure 
citizen of his town : " A magnanimous man like Captain 
Grant can put down this Rebellion ; vindictive men never 
can." And here, now, on his own responsibility, in the 
glow of a natural impulse of his considerate and forgiving 
nature, Lieutenant-General Grant gave terms which melted 
the hard hearts of thousands of men and women to whom 
he had been a destroying, invading Hun, and when Lee 
met him the following morning he spoke feelingly of the 
profound impression made upon his army. " The entire 
South will respond to your clemency," he said. 

Every order issued thereafter by General Grant was in 
accordance with the spirit of his terms to Lee. He ad- 
vised against all signs of exultation ; for the war is 
ended, he said, and Lee and his men are fellow-citizens 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 313 

of the same nation, and not to be humiliated. His old 
classmates and comrades in the Mexican War came that 
night to thank him for his courtesy. 

He met them as if nothing had happened, and, hooking 
his arm in that of General Longstreet, and calling him by 
his old army nickname, he said with a gentle, half-sorrow- 
ful cadence in his voice: " Pete, let 's return to the happy 
old days by playing a game of ' brag.' " 

He began right there on the field of Appomattox the 
work of reconstruction. As after Fort Henry he moved 
on Donelson, and from Vicksburg on Chattanooga, so now 
his restless brain was filled with plans, not to conquer 
other cities, but to end the war, to reduce expenses, to 
disband the army, and to go home. He felt sure John- 
ston would surrender to Sherman at once. He could trust 
Sherman to look out for that, and leaving Generals Gib- 
bon, Griffin, and Merritt to carry into efi"ect the work of 
paroling the Southern troops, he moved on Washington 
and its army of contractors, in the aim to stop the purchase 
of supplies, to cut down the army, to cancel the charter 
of useless vessels, and to reduce the country to the con- 
ditions of peace at the earliest moment. 

As an honorable warrior he had no fear that Lee or his 
army would violate their paroles ; and knowing Lincoln's 
support to be his, he had no fear of the assaults of bellig- 
erent Northern politicians. His mind was at ease, and 
his face, seamed with lines of care, smoothed out ; his 
thought ran swiftly to meet his wife and children. 

" Are you not going into Richmond? " a friend said. 

"No; I have about a day's work in Washington, and 
then I am going on to New Jersey to see my children," 
he replied. 

Accompanied by his staff, of which Rawlins was chief, 
the general took the train for City Point. His announce- 
ment of victor}^ to the War Department was a telegram 
of only five or six lines, but it set the North aflame with 
joy. " The war is over ; our boys are coming home ! " the 
people said; and added: "God bless General Grant! " 
His name lent itself to pleasant puns, such as, " He 
Grants us peace." It had a long train of heroic memories 



314 LIFE OF GRANT 

now. There was but one man who stood on his plane at 
this time, and that was Abraham Lincohi, another self- 
made man of the West. 

It was late at night, or, rather, early in the morning, when 
the general entered the office at headquarters at City- 
Point. There were but two or three of his staff present 
as he took a seat at his table. After writing a few min- 
utes, he looked up smilingly, and said half-musingly, not 
addressing anybody in particular, " More of Grant's luck." 

He finished a despatch to Sherman announcing the 
victory, then rose with these significant words, spoken as 
if they announced the beginning of a new campaign : 
" Now for Mexico:' 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN, THE SURRENDER 
OF JOHNSTON, AND THE GRAND REVIEW 

1EAVING City Point, Grant proceeded directly to 
^ Washington, arriving there on the evening of the 
13th. The city was ablaze with enthusiasm over the re- 
port of the surrender of Lee. Bands of employees from 
the navy-yard and from other public buildings formed in 
procession and went about the streets singing jubilant 
songs. The city flamed forth with illuminations and 
blossomed with flags. The name of Grant became at 
once the sign and signal for the wildest applause. Every- 
body was in the streets. 

In the midst of all this General Grant himself arrived in 
his characteristic way. He slipped into Willard's Hotel, 
and registered, not knowing, apparently, that the city was 
frantic to do him honor. In fact, few people knew that 
he was present until the following morning, when the 
notice of his arrival appeared in the papers. He paid no 
attention to the crowd, to the demands made upon him 
for speeches, but set busily to work upon plans of needed 
retrenchment. In his estimation, the war was over, and 
the burdens of the people should be lightened. All of his 
orders were of this tendency. He stopped the further 
manufacture of arms, discharged convalescent soldiers, 
canceled the charter of needless vessels, and cut down the 
bills for supplies. He spent a very busy day with these 
details, working very hard, for the reason that he was 
eager to accompany Mrs. Grant to Burlington, New 
Jersey, where his eldest children were. He refused, also, 

315 



3l6 LIFE OF GRANT 

an invitation from President Lincoln to attend the theater 
with him that night, and late in the evening left on the 
Baltimore and Ohio road for Philadelphia. 

He was about taking the train at Camden for Burling- 
ton, late that night, when a despatch was handed him 
which conveyed the appalling news : " The President has 
been assassinated. Return at once." Washington was 
panic-stricken. It wished to be assured that General 
Grant lived, and it needed his presence at the seat of 
government. Lincoln had been shot and killed while 
seated in his box at Ford's Theater. An assault had been 
made upon Secretary of State Seward, and it was feared 
that the plot included also the assassination of General 
Grant. The general returned to Washington by special 
train, and the country drew a deep breath of relief. His 
steady and powerful hand was once more upon the 
machinery of the War Department. 

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, calamitous as it 
was, had, after all, but small influence on the war. It did not 
cripple or disarrange or confuse or bewilder military afi"airs. 
Sherman in the field was about to conclude terms of sur- 
render with Joseph E. Johnston. He put the despatch 
announcing the death of Lincoln into his pocket, and 
passed on to meet his conquered foe. At Appomattox 
the paroling officers proceeded to execute General Grant's 
orders with regard to Lee's captured army. The pursuit 
of General Kirby Smith in the West did not falter. Every 
order issued by the lieutenant-general of the armies of the 
United States went forward to execution inflexibly. 

So in the nation at large the business and necessary 
daily duties of men, interrupted for a moment, resumed 
their course as a great river rolls on over a sunken ship. 
Lincoln, who seemed so colossal, so necessary, ceased to 
be a moving factor in the aff"airs of state, but his gentle 
and gracious spirit lived in the mind of General Sherman 
and General Grant. Had Grant perished with Lincoln, 
the nation might have been thrown into mad confusion ; 
but when the people learned that General Grant was safe, 
and had returned to Washington, all danger of a panic 
ceased. 



THE GRAND REVIEW 317 

Not only was General Grant unshakable in his resolution 
to do his duty as a warrior, but he was also immovable by 
the excited Stanton and Halleck. With his steady fingers 
on the keys controlling the armies of the United States, 
he sat in silence, self-contained and unangered, while the 
excitables around him cried out for revenge. He never 
for an hour relaxed his hold on the military details of his 
office, and he never forgot the needs of Mexico for a sin- 
gle day. Nothing could confuse or bewilder him, and 
every day made it increasingly evident that he was the 
chief man of the nation, now that Abraham Lincoln had 
passed away ; and when he sat at the head of the coffin, 
swart, compact, grim-visaged, with lips quivering with 
emotion, he was considered to be in his place as chief 
representative of the policy of the dead man before him. 

Now arose severe criticisms upon the terms granted to 
Johnston by Sherman, who had carried out, as Grant well 
knew, the spirit of the martyred President. Sherman's 
terms to Johnston were plainly marked, " Provisional," and 
were subject to the approval of the government ; but " they 
came a week too late or a month too early." They came 
to Washington at a time when the War Department was 
disposed to be very severe. In the wild rage and bitter- 
ness which followed the assassination, Stanton seemed to 
forget the mighty work which this man Sherman had done 
for the nation, and fell upon him with the severest public 
condemnation, going so far as to accuse him of treason — 
of exceeding his authority because of his sympathy with 
the South. 

Sherman, not having Grant's self-repressive and patient 
character, hotly replied to his critics, thereby increasing 
their clamor. Stanton made public matters which were 
departmental secrets, in order to strengthen his case. 
General Grant took Sherman's part, and when he took a 
man's part it meant something. His face flushed and his 
hands clenched as he read Stanton's public censure of 
Sherman. "It is infamous — infamous!" he said. He 
insisted that Sherman be allowed to explain, that it was 
unsafe to condemn a man upon so brief a report, especially 
a man like Sherman. 



3l8 LIFE OF GRANT 

The department ordered General Grant to proceed to 
the front and take charge of Sherman's army and the 
negotiations for surrender with Johnston, and so it hap- 
pened that while the mighty funeral pageant of Lincoln 
was winding its slow way to the West, Grant started 
secretly to the front, and came suddenly and unexpectedly 
into Sherman's camp at Raleigh. 

The lamentations and forebodings of the army over the 
death of Lincoln and its effect upon the nation gave place 
to confidence and joy when they knew their old com- 
mander was among them. A review was in progress, and 
a hasty change was made in order that the splendid col- 
umns of the old Seventeenth Army-Corps might pass be- 
fore the " old man." It contained McPherson's veterans, 
and Grant held it in peculiar regard. He could hardly 
speak of the untimely death of its brilliant young com- 
mander even then without tears. The whole army broke 
out in cheers and rejoicing wherever Grant appeared. 

Though sent by the War Department to assume di- 
rection of Sherman's affairs, the chief kept in the back- 
ground, and did not allow General Johnston to know of 
his presence till Sherman had conducted the terms of sur- 
render to a finish. Grant loved Sherman above even 
Sheridan, and would have resigned his commission rather 
than humiliate him. To the army he was only a visitor; 
to Sherman he was a friend, and the gentlest and most 
considerate superior officer ever sent on an errand of re- 
proof. It cooled Sherman's hot heart and moistened his 
eyes with tears to be met in such gentle and considerate 
manner. 

Leaving orders for the army under Sherman to set their 
faces on a long homeward march, Grant returned to Wash- 
ington, where his presence was sorely needed in the mul- 
titudinous duties incident upon the disbanding of the 
armies and the closing up of the army contracts and requisi- 
tions. He was warned of his personal danger, but gave 
little heed to it. He came and went quietly and without 
guard, and his sturdy figure and grave, intent face were 
always welcome sights to the citizens. The whole nation 
felt easier to know he was again at headquarters. Later 



THE GRAND REVIEW 319 

developments with regard to General Sherman's case 
proved conclusively that Grant was right. Sherman had 
not betrayed his trust in the provisional treaty with Gen- 
eral Johnston, and was completely vindicated as soon as 
his case was stated. 

Soon after he returned, Grant called Sheridan to his 
headquarters, and gave him secret instructions to proceed 
to Texas, to have an eye on the French forces in Mexico. 
" If necessary, I will put you at the head of a corps to join 
Juarez, and force Maximilian to withdraw. We cannot 
permit the establishment of a monarchy in Mexican soil." 
He went so far as to urge upon Johnson the immediate 
invasion of Mexico. He hated Napoleon and all he stood 
for, and would have swept Maximilian and his forces from 
American territory, had not Seward assured him it could 
be done by diplomacy. He considered the active coop- 
eration of the French forces with the Confederate troops 
on the Rio Grande a just cause for war. 

Just a little over one month after Lincoln's death, on the 
seventeenth day of May, an order for a grand review was 
sent out by the adjutant-general. The last gun had been 
fired far out on the Rio Grande ; Grant's troops were 
moving on Washington now, peacefully sweeping across 
Virginia, singing songs of God's country, longing to see 
the dome of the Capitol loom up in the Northern skies. 
No words, nothing but song, could utter the exultation of 
their hearts. The war was over, it was spring, and they 
were going home — home to wives and sweethearts and 
gray-haired fathers and mothers, home to square meals, 
and beds, and familiar hills and brooks and meadows ; so 
they marched on, well-nigh mad with impatience at delay. 
The armies of Sheridan and Meade were already camped 
beside the Potomac, and soon Sherman's men would be 
there. 

Meanwhile in Washington the people were planning for 
the great day. Train-loads of the relatives of the soldiers 
began to pour into the city and to swarm out to the 
encampment. Every hotel was filled even to the corridors 
with cot-beds and mattresses, and there were homeless 
enthusiasts who hired street-cars in which to sit out the 



320 LIFE OF GRANT 

night. The newspapers teemed with descriptions of the 
camp, of the bugle-calls, the drum-beats, the rumbling of 
cannon, the movement of commissary wagons, and all the 
complex and picturesque accompaniments of an enormous 
army. Parallels were adduced. This army assembling 
for review, said the correspondents, was greater than 
Napoleon's, Cromwell's, and Caesar's combined. Crom- 
well's armies would scarcely make a detail of Sherman's 
command, and Caesar's forces when he conquered the 
world were less than one wing of the Army of the 
Potomac. 

In the midst of all this mighty preparation, this move- 
ment of cannon and cavalry, in the midst of galloping 
aides and superbly mounted generals and colonels and 
their aides, the chief was hardly to be seen. He sat in 
his office, bent above papers, figures, calculations, and 
reports, planning the reorganization of the army and the 
redistribution of troops in the South and West. He was 
like a great merchant absorbed in daily duties, and no one 
seemed to have less part in the pageantry preparing than 
General Grant. 

The twenty-third day of May dawned in clouds, but 
cleared away into a beautiful day before the hour set for 
the review. The trees were heavy with leaf, the sun warm, 
the blue sky filled with rolling fragments of clouds. Be- 
fore the White House a reviewing-stand had been erected, 
and thereon President Johnson and his party took their 
place just before nine o'clock. The President sat in the 
center. On his right sat General Grant and Secretary 
Stanton, and on his left were places reserved for Generals 
Sherman, Meade, and other officers of high rank. Around 
were billows of ladies in the voluminous hoop-skirts of the 
time, and flocks of pantaletted little girls, and droves of 
small boys in caps and soldier blouses. Flags fluttered 
everywhere like leaves of the aspen, and the buzzing of 
eager tongues, steadily increasing, voiced the impatience 
of the throng: "Are they coming? Are they coming? 
They must be delayed." 

No ; this was a military parade. At exactly nine 
o'clock a single cannon-shot boomed from some far place, 



THE GRAND REVIEW 321 

and down the winding avenue from the Capitol came the 
broad river of blue and steel. It was the Army of the 
Potomac, with General Meade at its head. The escort of 
cavalry, seven miles in length, preceded the infantry 
corps. Sheridan was not there,— he was already on his 
way to the Mexican border,— but General Merritt, who 
led them, was cheered warmly by the throng. The troops 
were worn and dusty and dingy, their faces bronzed by 
the wind and sun. For nearly two hours these swift and 
powerful warriors swept by the reviewing-stand, and as 
each regimental color came opposite him General Grant 
arose and saluted, and every cavalryman's eyes sought 
out the face of the commander whose word had been his 
absolute law for the last year. 

The Ninth Corps of Infantry followed, under command 
of General John G. Parke. The columns filled the street 
— " a Niagara of men," streaming by endlessly, their worn 
and tattered battle-flags calling for a cheer for the dead 
as well as for the living. They came at " right shoulder 
shift" in cadenced step; and as they passed the chief 
their burnished muskets leaped to " present," and with 
" eyes left " they passed the stand, many of them looking 
for the last time upon their great commander. The Fifth 
Corps followed, led by General Griffin, marching in similar 
form, streaming by, hour after hour, till the Army of the 
Potomac, eighty thousand strong, had marched on from 
war to peace. 

On the next day the " heroes of the West " took up 
their triumphant march before the President and the man 
of Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. The interest in 
these men of the West was intense. They were already 
storied. They came from strange, far countries, these 
tall, grim, dingy, ragged, war-worn soldiers of Sherman's 
command ; they came from the wonderful new States of 
Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and from 
the older States of Indiana and Ohio. Most of them had 
marched three thousand miles ; some of them were said to 
have carried muskets seven thousand miles. They had 
desolated the Confederacy; they had forced every rebel 
flag to lower before their faces ; and now they came to 



322 LIFE OF GRANT 

see the capital of their country for the first time, and to 
enjoy the applause of their friends. 

General Sherman himself led his hosts, erect, sinewy, 
bronzed of skin, and restless and haughty of eye. He 
had the poise and action of an eagle about to take wing. 
His face expressed pride and pleasure, but more of 
aggressive combativeness was there. He had not for- 
gotten the insults and injuries placed upon him by the 
War Department at a time when its secretary should 
have been most grateful. 

Beside him rode General Howard, with one empty sleeve 
pinned to his breast. General Logan, who had been with 
Grant almost from the first, followed on a magnificent horse, 
his long black hair and sweeping mustache realizing the 
Eastern ideal of the Western commander. General Hooker 
("Fighting Joe"), General Corse, and other worn yet 
jubilant leaders followed. 

The rank and file were not so well dressed as the Army 
of the Potomac. They marched with long, loping step, 
not so finely military, but which was as characteristic of 
their wide marches as the faded and dusty uniforms they 
wore. The artillery passed by batteries, six guns abreast, 
and the heavy jar and sullen rattle of the ponderous car- 
riages made the pavements tremble. The ambulances were 
worn,andhad many marksof hardservice andlong journeys. 
The old blood-stained stretchers, upon which the wounded 
had been carried to the rear from the battle-fields of the 
far West, were carried in the line as if for immediate use. 

Sherman's " bummers " were there, leading all sorts of 
animals packed with all sorts of articles to illustrate the 
foraging which was a part of their great campaign. Old 
mules, jackasses, and broken-down horses carried goats, 
sheep, pigs, fowl, and camp utensils, to the mighty amuse- 
ment of the people along the way. The men moved, not 
as an army under review, but as an army on the march. 
As the guns passed the President's stand, the horses were 
put into the gallop, and retired in a cloud of dust with a 
clamor of hoofs and a roar of wheels that shook the earth, 
giving a still further suggestion of the scenes through 
which they had passed. 



THE GRAND REVIEW 323 

In comparison with the Army of the Potomac, these 
Western men looked hard. " They were dingy, as if the 
smoke of many battles had dyed their garments, and the 
dust and mud of a dozen States had stained and faded 
them. Their wool hats, well worn and dirty, gave them 
a most somber coloring. The weather-beaten condition 
of the whole army was brought out mercilessly by the 
unclouded splendor of the sun. There was a look almost 
fierce and sullen on nearly every face. There was a 
rigidity of jaw and straightforward scornfulness of eye in 
every rank that no observer could fail to mark. The great 
gloomy masses marched as if in silent contempt of all such 
display, with a bitter, businesslike scowl, as if they might 
be going into battle." 

These were they who had brought victory at times 
when victory was most needed. These men, under Grant, 
had won Vicksburg when the nation despaired, and with 
them Grant and Sherman had disenthralled Chattanooga 
when an invasion seemed to threaten. Under Sherman, 
they had taken Atlanta, and helped to elect Abraham 
Lincoln. They were opportune; they had always arrived 
at the critical time. Well might their shoulders stoop and 
their uniforms grow yellow and wrinkled. One cannot 
carry trunks and extra uniforms on raids whose circuit is 
five thousand miles. 

All day on the 23d and all day on the 24th Grant sat 
at the President's side, watching his soldiers pass. He 
seemed entirely unconscious that he was the center of 
almost hysterical interest. He seemed conscious only 
that his boys were passing by. Every time he rose to 
salute the regimental flags, cheers uplifted like sudden 
bursts of music from an orchestra under signal of a leader's 
wand. His keen eyes studied every detail of the passing 
men. He wished to know the condition, not only of the 
commanders, but of the files. None knew so well as he 
what these soldiers were. He had been one of them. 
They were his neighbors, he had been their colonel and 
brigadier-general and major-general, and the intensity of 
his scrutiny seemed to indicate that he was looking for 
the men who had gained his attention and regard during 



324 LIFE OF GRANT 

those early days in the West. During the whole review 
the expression of his face was grave, almost sad. 

It meant much to him, this pageant of his old command. 
McPherson should have been there, and Ransom and Smith 
and many another brave man of lesser rank, to make the 
chief smile. He seldom spoke to any one, even to the 
officers of his staff, except in recognition of some favored 
regiment whose tattered colors waved while the "boys" 
broke into sudden convulsive shouts at sight of their old 
commander. The Twenty-first Illinois should have been 
there. They could have borne witness to the hard trials 
of Colonel Grant when struggling for an opportunity to 
serve his country as the commander of a regiment, just 
four years before. 

Only once did the general allow the people more than 
a glimpse of him during this review. On the evening of 
the first day he mounted his horse and rode down the 
avenue. It was a business trip, and not intended in the 
least as a participation in the display ; but it afforded 
the people an opportunity to see the general of the armies. 
As he rose to his saddle he seemed to be transfigured. 
From the compact, inert, and meditative man, he became 
the man who had pursued Lee pitilessly from Petersburg 
to Appomattox, who could ride all day and sleep on the 
ground at night, who had sent his army whirling against 
Jackson, only to turn and face Pemberton the next day at 
Champion's Hill. Here was the " man on horseback." 
His horse shone like burnished bronze ; his uniform was 
new and well fitting and in perfect order; his new sugar- 
loaf hat added to his stature; and his gloved hands held 
the bridle-reins with the careless ease of a born horseman. 
He was in the prime of his life, and on the topmost pin- 
nacle of martial fame. 

The crowds broke into thunders of greeting as he swept 
by at a swift gallop, and the noise of their shouting 
announced his coming a half-mile in advance down the 
avenue. For the first time the people of Washington had 
seen General Grant, the soldier, as his men knew him on 
the field of battle. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

GRANT PROTECTS HIS CONQUERED FOES 

HAVING sent Sheridan to take care of things on the 
Mexican border, and having seen the volunteer 
armies begin to disband and take their way homeward,* 
the general permitted himself a short furlough. He was 
weary of war and all the signs and signals of war. He 
was eager to escape the sight of uniforms and great crowds. 
The commandant at West Point having invited him to be 
present at the close of the academic year, he consented, 
and on the way visited New York City, and permitted 
himself to be lionized a bit, for the first time. 

Nothing in human history surpasses the vivid contrast 
between the arrival of the penniless and despondent ex- 
captain in 1854, and the return of General Grant, whose 
fame had gone around the world. In those earlier days the 
city knew no more of him than of one of its street scaven- 
gers. He was considered a bit of human driftwood. Now 
no cannon was loud enough of mouth to bid him welcome. 
The city swarmed upon him with a weight of numbers 
which threatened to crush the life out of his body. 
" Grant! Grant! Grant!" were the words which ran from 
lip to lip and from street to street. The wh le populace 
roared a welcome. From the moment he landed from the 
train, multitudes attended his steps, calling for a speech at 
every street corner; but he only bowed and smiled, and, 
uttering not one word, marched straight ahead with the 
air of being only a part of the crowd itself. 

* The plan by which the troops were mustered out was drawn by General 
Thomas M. Vincent. 

325 



326 LIFE OF GRANT 

At the Astor House, the same hotel where Simon 
Buckner had saved him from eviction ten years before, 
he now received the officials of the city and the throngs 
of prominent citizens crowding to greet him. Fifteen 
thousand people passed by him and shook his hand. He 
bore up under this as long as possible, although it became 
an intolerable burden. When some one asked him why 
he did not change hands, he replied : " Because I want 
one hand in good condition." He met every admiring 
remark with a modest reply. He took no undue credit 
to himself, and thought only of the pleasure of others. 
He said : " I wish I could stay longer in New York ; I 
should like to gratify those who wish to see me." 

Among these thousands of people there were not want- 
ing some who said : " I greet you as our next President " ; 
but to such indiscreet ones he replied in no wise, not so 
much as by the movement of an eyelash. To one lady 
who asked after his health he said dryly : " It is not very 
good, but I can ride all day on horseback and sleep all 
night on the ground very easily." 

At a great meeting which developed spontaneously in 
the street before his hotel, nearly twenty thousand people 
lifted their voices in irresistible uproar for "Grant! 
Speech!" But when he appeared, the upturned faces, 
waving hats, and tossing arms of the throng seemed almost 
to scare him. He refused to speak. 

General Logan took his place, and in alluding to his 
chief said : " He is now first in war, first in peace, first in 
the hearts of his countrymen"; and Senator Chandler, 
who followed, added : " We are assembled to do honor 
to the Wellington of the nineteenth century. I heard this 
man, in the spring of 1864, say to Abraham Lincoln : ' My 
objective point is Lee's army, and I inform you that there 
shall be neither truce nor peace nor rest until the army of 
General Lee or my army is destroyed.' " And lifting his 
voice with tremendous energy, Senator Chandler then said : 
" Fellow-citizens, General Grant fought it out on that 
line!" And the answering thunder of the crowd below 
said *• Amen " to it. 

On the same evening a monster meeting in his honor 



GRANT PROTECTS HIS CONQUERED FOES 327 

was held in Cooper Union, and the audience waited hours 
for him to appear. He came at last, bearing no sign of 
military rank beyond a few brass buttons on his coat, and 
while the audience shouted itself breathless, he bowed and 
smiled with a quizzical look about his eyes. Without a 
shade of vanity, he consented to stand upon a chair, that 
all might see him. " No picture can denote the extreme 
modesty of demeanor," said one of the papers, " or the 
quiet, natural gentleness which characterizes every move- 
ment. He would be the last man in the world whom the 
casual observer would point out as a great general; but 
his clear blue eyes, high forehead, and determined look 
speak plainly of his innate greatness." 

Escaping from the endless processions of people, he 
passed on to West Point, which he had not seen since he 
left it a brevet second lieutenant with high hopes of being 
a professor of mathematics in some Western college. He 
returned filling a position which had not been held since 
Washington's death. General Scott, the oldest living 
general of the United States armies, received him in his 
most resplendent undress uniform — a coat of blue, with 
lapels of yellow silk, and yellow buttons. His head was 
uncovered, and his white hair was peculiarly impressive. 
It was an unforgetable meeting — the gigantic old man, 
so venerable, yet so soldierly of mien, representing the 
military tactics of the past, greeting the simple and plain 
Grant, who represented what might be called the school 
of " common-sense war," and who seemed so small beside 
the famous veteran's heroic bulk. 

General Grant felt a curious return of his old-time awe 
and admiration of General Scott, as well as of the pro- 
fessors and commanders of the academy, and it added a 
captivating shyness to his reserve. 

From West Point he went to Chicago, in accordance 
with a promise he had made to attend a fair which was 
being held in the interest of the Sanitary Commission. 
At every point along the railway crowds gathered to see 
him pass. Everywhere the gratitude and love of the 
people flamed forth in greeting. It was a revealing and 
memorable journey to him. It made him suddenly aware 



328 LIFE OF GRANT 

of the deep hold he had won upon the hearts of his coun- 
trymen. In the face of such demonstrations as these the 
words of his critics had no force. 

Chicago was a repetition of New York in its outpouring 
of enthusiasm. All that a grateful people could do they 
did. They ran at his carriage-wheels. They hurrahed 
themselves hoarse. They blared at him with bands, and 
assaulted him with fervid orations. Mounted on " old 
Jack," the clay-bank war-horse who bore him to the field 
at Donelson, he made his way up the street in the pro- 
cession, while the whole city, apparently, gathered on the 
sidewalks to see him pass. He was without spurs, and 
old Jack, grown deliberate with years and many wars, 
took his own time, which added to the general's embarrass- 
ment and to the delight of the cheering multitudes. 

At a great meeting in the fair building he was again 
besought to make a speech, and again the people were 
astonished to find that the " silent general " was in reality 
silent. He said : " Ladies and gentlemen, I never made a 
speech myself, and therefore I will ask Governor Yates of 
Illinois to convey to you the thanks which I should fail to 
express." Immense and continued cheers and laughter 
followed this unexpectedly short speech of the general. 

Governor Yates then came forward and spoke for him. 
He felt ill prepared, he said, but confessed it to be the 
happiest moment of his life. " Some four years ago, as 
you will see in a Vicksburg paper, it was announced that 
a certain Captain Grant had reported nine hundred rusty 
muskets on hand in the State of Illinois for the defense of 
the government of the United States. But before two 
years had elapsed that same captain stood under the Grant 
and Pemberton tree, smoking his cigar, while the stars 
and stripes floated over Vicksburg. I have often said 
before what I am proud to say now : these fingers " — hold- 
ing up his hand — "signed the colonel's commission of the 
world's greatest commander. I did n't know he was to 
become so great a man then, or I might have been a little 
more complimentary." This provoked a burst of appre- 
ciative laughter. 

Major- General Sherman, being loudly called for, came 



GRANT PROTECTS HIS CONQUERED FOES 329 

forward and said : " I am here to-day as a mere visitor, 
and cannot be long-drawn into any speech whatever. 
Always ready, always willing, always proud to back my 
old commander-in-chief, I will do anything in the world 
which he asks me to do. I know he will not ask me to 
make a speech." 

General Grant, being thus appealed to, replied: "I 
never ask a soldier to do anything that I cannot do my- 
self " ; and amid the laughter of the crowd the generals 
withdrew. 

All this was a very pleasant escape from contention and 
thought of war, and Grant would gladly have prolonged 
his furlough had he not known that his presence was im- 
peratively needed in Washington. At the end of less than 
two weeks' respite he returned to headquarters, and en- 
tered at once upon a contest with the President and cabi- 
net, who had determined to arrest Generals Lee and 
Johnston on a charge of treason. This General Grant set 
himself at once to prevent. 

From Raleigh, as early as the 26th of April, he had 
written a letter to his wife which showed that not even 
the murder of Lincoln had changed his sorrowful tender- 
ness toward the Southern people : 

The people are anxious to see peace restored. The suffering 
that must exist in the South, even with the war ending now, will 
be beyond conception. People who talk of further retaliation 
and punishment, except of political leaders, either do not con- 
ceive of the suffering endured already, or they are heartless and 
unfeeling, and wish to stay at home out of danger while the 
punishment is being inflicted. 

It was a singular condition which made this great war- 
rior, who had sent armies crashing through and across the 
Confederacy, devouring wealth, destroying lines of trans- 
portation, and starving out armies, now the friend and 
protector of the surrendered people; yet this was the 
next development in the astounding career of Ulysses 
Grant. 

Here again was seen the far-reaching significance of 
the life he had lived. All things had tended to make him 



330 LIFE OF GRANT 

the man to rebuild the nation. His early life in a town 
half South, half North, his association with Southern men 
at West Point and in the regular army, his marriage with 
a Southern woman, his life in St. Louis — in short, till 
nearly forty years of age his way of life had led him among 
men of strong Southern sentiment, and being a man of 
naturally mild and gentle character, he had gone into the 
war without hate, and had conquered without malignity. 
He was not an extremist. From the very day of Lee's 
surrender he began to pacificate and to heal. Every 
word, every act, was kindly and considerate, although he 
was never weak or palliative. 

In the few days which elapsed between Appomattox 
and the death of Lincoln the North was in jubilant and 
magnanimous mood ; but after the assassination many 
men high in office grew bitter and revengeful. Men who 
had clapped their hands in consent of the generous terms 
granted to Lee began to grumble sullenly, and there were 
those in the White House who demanded the arrest and 
trial of all the leaders of the rebel army. 

Abraham Lincoln's untimely death brought into the 
Presidential chair Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a man 
who had been actively loyal at a time when loyal men in 
Tennessee were much to be desired. He had been put on 
the ticket with Lincoln for good political reasons, and up 
to this moment was very well regarded. He, too, was 
self-made. He had climbed from the tailor's bench to the 
governorship of Tennessee in 1853, and was afterward 
reelected. In 1857 he had been made United States 
senator, and in 1862 appointed military governor of Ten- 
nessee, and had discharged his duties faithfully and well. 
He was called by a London paper " a very determined, a 
very original, and it may be a very dangerous, but un- 
questionably a very powerful man." 

He was a man of the ranks, and he hated the aristo- 
cratic tendencies of the South. His sudden accession to 
power set his head whirling, and his first resolution was 
"to make treason odious" — to punish the Southern 
leaders, to let them feel the weight of his hand. He dis- 
approved of the magnanimous terms which Grant had 



GRANT PROTECTS HIS CONQUERED FOES 331 

written out for Lee. Davis had been apprehended, and 
was in prison ; but General Lee, still relying upon General 
Grant's parole, was living quietly at home. Him Johnson 
and his cabinet threatened to arrest and try for treason. 

General Lee, hearing of this, appealed to General Grant, 
through a friend, in order to be assured of his safety from 
imprisonment or death. He wrote: 

Upon reading the President's proclamation on the 29th, I came 
to Richmond to ascertain what was proper or required of me to 
do, when I learned, that with others, I was to be indicted for 
treason by the grand jury at Norfolk. I had supposed that the 
officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia were by the 
terms of the surrender protected by the United States govern- 
ment from molestation so long as they conformed to its condi- 
tions. I am ready to meet any charges that may be preferred 
against me ; I do not wish to waive trial ; but if I am correct as 
to the protection granted by my parole, and I am not to be 
prosecuted, I desire to comply with the provisions of the Presi- 
dent's proclamation, and therefore inclose the required applica- 
tion, which I request, in that event, may be acted upon. 

To this Grant replied : 

Your communication has been received and forwarded to the 
Secretary of War, with the following opinion indorsed thereon by 
me : " In my opinion, the officers and men paroled at Appo- 
mattox Court-house, and since upon the same terms given to Lee, 
cannot be tried for treason so long as they observe the terms of 
their parole. This is my understanding. Good faith as well as 
true policy dictates that we should observe the conditions of 
that convention. Bad faith on the part of the government, or a 
construction of that convention subjecting the officers to trial for 
treason, would produce a feeling of insecurity in the minds of all 
the paroled officers and men. If so disposed, they might even 
regard such an infraction of terms by the government as an 
entire release from all obligations on their part. I will state 
further that the terms granted by me met the hearty approval of 
the President at the time and of the country generally. The 
action of Judge Underwood in Norfolk has already had an in- 
jurious effect, and I would ask that he be ordered to quash all 
indictments found against paroled prisoners of war, and to desist 
from the further prosecution of them." 



332 LIFE OF GRANT 

I have forwarded your application for amnesty and pardon to 
the President, with the following indorsement : 

" Respectfully forwarded, through the Secretary of War, to the 
President, with the earnest recommendation that this application 
of General R. E. Lee for amnesty and pardon be granted him!" 

Certainly nothing could be franker, manlier, or more 
generous than this, but General Grant's protest did not 
end there. He followed the matter to the cabinet-room, 
and there took a firm stand. " The people of the North 
do not wish to inflict torture upon the people of the 
South," he said. 

The President was still determined that these men 
should be punished. " I will make treason odious," he 
said. " When can these men be tried? " 

" Never," replied Grant, with the most inflexible deci- 
sion, — "never, unless they violate their parole." 

Johnson persisted in the contention. " I would like to 
know," he said sneeringly, " by what right a military 
commander interferes to protect an arch-traitor from the 
laws." 

This made Grant extremely angry, and he spoke with 
great earnestness and with the utmost plainness. He 
said : 

" As general it is none of my business what you or 
Congress do with General Lee or other commanders. 
You may do as you please about civil rights, confiscation 
of property ; that does not come into my province. But 
a general commanding troops has certain responsibilities 
and duties and powers which are supreme. He must deal 
with the enemy in front of him, so as to destroy him ; he 
may either kill him, capture him, or parole him. His 
engagements are secret so far as they lead to the destruc- 
tion of the foe. I have made certain terms with Lee — 
the best and only terms. If I had told him and his army 
that their liberty would be invaded, that they would be 
open to arrest, trial, and execution for treason, Lee would 
have never surrendered, and we should have lost many 
lives in destroying him. Now, my terms of surrender 
were according to military law, and so long as General 



GRANT PROTECTS HIS CONQUERED FOES ^^^ 

Lee observed his parole I will never consent to his arrest. 
I will resign the command of the army rather than execute 
any order directing me to arrest Lee or any of his com- 
manders so long as they obey the laws." 

Upon the rock of his inflexible resolution the rage of 
the President broke without effect. He had met a man 
he could neither wheedle nor intimidate. He knew some- 
thing of the position to which General Grant had attained. 
If he did not fear him personally, he feared the people, 
whose love he held and whose will he represented. The 
indictments against Generals Lee and Johnston were 
dropped and never again referred to. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

THE GENERAL TAKES A SUMMER VACATION 

AS the hot weather came on the chief felt the necessity 
. of taking a genuine vacation. His trip to Chicago 
had not been long enough to afford him the change and 
relief he needed. Early in July, therefore, he set out on 
a long journey to the North and East. 

He arrived in Boston on Saturday, the last day of July, 
and was received with the same fervor of admiration which 
had greeted him in every city in the North. He spent a 
quiet Sunday, attending church at the Old South Meeting- 
house with Mrs. Grant, and received a few callers. On 
Monday at noon a great demonstration was given him at 
historical Faneuil Hall. The sanded floor was packed, 
and the gallery filled to its utmost capacity, and thousands 
were compelled to wait without, unable to gain admit- 
tance. 

The enthusiasm of the large audience broke forth in 
prolonged cheering as the great commander appeared, and 
continued for five minutes before quiet was restored. The 
general, with eyes twinkling with good nature, walked up 
and down the platform, that the audience might see him. 

The mayor, in introducing him, said : " If our lips had 
been dumb, these very walls would have reproached us, 
and these pictured forms would have rushed from their 
canvases to bid General Grant welcome to Faneuil Hall." 
The general refused to make a speech in reply, but con- 
sented to shake hands for an hour. 

The next morning he took the train for Portland, and 
rode out of the city of Boston standing upon the rear 

334 



THE GENERAL TAKES A SUMMER VACATION 335 

platform, and bowing his acknowledgments to the immense 
crowds gathered to say good-by. In Portland he was 
received by the city government and a large escort of 
soldiers and civilians. His greeting was as hearty as in 
any other city in which he had been seen. At Brunswick 
he was received by the officers and students of Bowdoin 
College. He attended the closing exercises of the com- 
mencement at the church, where the degree of LL. D. 
was conferred upon him. But not even this honor could 
extract from him a speech. 

On Thursday, August 3, he visited Augusta. The 
governor welcomed him most cordially, and the general 
responded with most eloquent silence. That night he 
returned again to Portland, and at twenty minutes past 
one the next day started for Quebec. As the news of his 
trip got abroad in the land, it was conceived by certain 
shrewd minds to have a very deeply hidden significance. 
It was hinted that Grant was studying the defenses of 
Canada, and that it foreboded some international entan- 
glement. 

In Quebec he dined with the governor-general, and met 
the admiral of the English navy, who had just arrived 
with two war-vessels. From Quebec he proceeded to 
Montreal and Toronto by special train. He reentered the 
Union at Detroit, where he met with one of the most 
hearty and informal receptions of his entire trip, for here 
he had many old friends and acquaintances. 

He arrived on Saturday, August 12, and remained until 
Tuesday, the 15th. Here, as everywhere, he had scarcely 
a minute of time to himself. Every one wished to see 
him and to touch his hand. " The excitement on the 
street approached closely to wildness." Jefferson Avenue, 
through which he used to drive with his little Cicotte 
mare, was now densely packed with human beings, every 
face eagerly turned to catch sight of him. The formal 
reception took place in front of his hotel, in the presence 
of at least seven thousand people. The Hon. Theodore 
Romaeyne made a speech of welcome. Among other 
things, he said : 

" You, sir, were always seen as a simple soldier, intent 



336 LIFE OF GRANT 

on doing good duty as such. Your calm courage, your 
military skill, were understood and appreciated by your 
countrymen. They learned to look to you as the seaman 
looks to the polar star beyond the drift and shadow of the 
clouds, shining on in quiet and steady splendor. We knew 
that under your leadership the defeat and capture of Lee's 
army were mere questions of time." 

The answer to all of this music, oratory, and huzzahing 
was given by the general in these words : " Gentlemen, I 
bid you all good night." 

There were, of course, humorous incidents in all these 
receptions. It was impossible for the general to cross the 
corridors of the hotels without finding his way blocked by 
inquisitive admirers. When he put his boots out into the 
hall to be blacked, they were carried ofT as mementos. 
In every way that could be imagined the people expressed 
their love, admiration, and curiosity for a man who, if left 
to himself, would have been glad to pass through without 
the slightest fuss or display. In Canada his simplicity 
and uniform courtesy were much commented upon. He 
passed through Chicago as quietly as possible, and reached 
Galena eager for rest. 

The return of the leather-clerk marks an epoch in the 
history of Galena. A little more than four years had passed 
since he fell in behind Captain Chetlain's company, lean 
carpet-bag in hand, unnoticed except by a few boys. Now 
cannon boomed welcome, bands were playing, the whole 
State and part of Wisconsin and Iowa seemed there to meet 
him, and the town was gay with flags and flowers and tri- 
umphal arches. Rawlins, the " charcoal-burner," was there 
with him as his chief of staff. Rowley, the clerk who had 
helped him tack the leather cover on the court-house table, 
was General Rowley, home on a furlough, and eager to 
welcome his old commander. Chetlain was a brigadier, 
and so was J. E. Smith. But there were many others who 
had not returned from the war, brave men whom Grant 
would have delighted to honor. 

The Hon. E. B. Washburne, beaming with pride and 
satisfaction, made the speech of welcome, while Editor 
Houghton of the " Gazette," the man who earliest pre- 



THE GENERAL TAKES A SUMMER VACATION 337 

dieted Captain Grant's high command, kept modestly in 
the background with recording pencil in hand. 

The people had erected two great arches over the prin- 
cipal street, on one of which the names of his great bat- 
tles had been written, while on another were these words : 
"General, the sidewalk is built." Once, in 1864, when 
somebody had mentioned the possibility of his candidacy 
for the Presidency, he had replied : " I am not a candidate 
for any office, but I would Uke to be mayor of Galena long 
enough to fix the sidewalks, especially the one reaching to 
my house." The people had not only built the new side- 
walk, but a new house at the end of it, where dinner was 
at that moment waiting him. It was a home, completely 
furnished, and ready for immediate possession. 

The streets were filled with the plain people of the 
prairies and coulees round about, and as his carriage 
moved slowly past the little leather-store in which he had 
sold bristles and straps in 1861, the applause took on a 
singular note. Every mind was filled with the wonder of 
this man's achievement in four short years; every hand 
was eager to clasp his, every eye hungry to look into his 
face. When he Hved there, four years before, scarcely a 
score of his townspeople knew him. Now the civilized 
world knew him. It was as mysterious as any tale of the 
" Arabian Nights." Had he been slain with Abraham Lin- 
coln, he would have been a myth— a mysterious, epic fig- 
ure like Charlemagne. Now here he was before them, 
just as unassuming as when he walked their streets four 
years before ; and, with the perversity of those who do not 
easily grant greatness to others, they fell back in disap- 
pointment. His presence did not aid to make his deeds 
conceivable. 

At the new house all the most influential ladies of the 
town were gathered, ready to serve him and his family 
with a Western dinner. Mr. McClellan— he who had en- 
couraged him to stay in Springfield during those almost 
hopeless days of seeking— made the little speech present- 
ing the house. Having occasion to turn to him in the 
midst of some oratorical figure, the speaker was amazed 
and deeply moved to see the tears coursing down the 



338 LIFE OF GRANT 

general's cheeks, while his lips were quivering. He could 
scarcely reply. No honor ever tendered him affected him 
more deeply than this little ceremony on the part of the 
citizens of Galena. He was a man of the deepest affec- 
tions, and had a singular love for localities in which he had 
lived. He remembered every place with tenderness, even 
Sacket's Harbor and Humboldt Bay, the scenes of his 
profitless barrack life ; and to him Galena, and the people 
of Galena, were very dear. 

He went forth in the days that followed, walking about 
the streets and entering the stores and offices like any 
other citizen. He responded to every greeting unhesitat- 
ingly and cordially. He shook hands with the men who 
drove the drays for the Grant firm in 1861. He spent 
long hours in the humble offices of his friends Rowley and 
Washburne. He enjoyed more deeply than any civilian 
can know the peace and the democracy of this little town. 
On Sunday he walked down to the little church with Mrs. 
Grant, and sat in the little bare board pew they had occu- 
pied four years before. It put the war far off, and brought 
the thrift, buoyancy, and democracy of the West very near 
to him. These live, liberal, and loyal citizens were his 
own type of men. His state of mind is clearly indicated 
by his reply to a friend who asked him if he were not 
going to a certain review of veterans. " No," he said 
decidedly ; " I don't want to see another uniform as long 
as I live." 

He spent several weeks in Galena, enjoying to the full 
its remoteness from war and politics. But the time came 
when it became necessary for him to start eastward. His 
presence was again demanded in Washington. At the 
station, while he was waiting for the train, he made one 
of his characteristically dry remarks. Calling the atten- 
tion of a friend to an enormous truck-load of trunks, he 
said: " Do you see that pile of baggage? Well, that is 
the Grant baggage. Do you see that little black valise 
away up on top? That 's mine." 

On his way back to Washington, he stopped at Cincin- 
nati and Covington to see his father and mother. Here, 
again, the men who knew of his sorrowful return in 1854 



THE GENERAL TAKES A SUMMER VACATION 339 

met him with a feeling of awe. Try as they might, they 
could not understand the mystery. 

He consented here to more receptions, and in these 
receptions his marvelous memory of faces began to be 
observed. Every man who had ever looked into his face, 
even for a moment, was remembered. To the most of 
those who passed he said nothing. He responded to 
no praise or prophecy. But if a little girl said, " I am 
Lily, Lucy Smith's daughter," he checked the whole 
line while he talked with her about her mother. Or if 
some humble citizen from Georgetown or Ripley said to 
him, " General, I used to know your folks," his face 
lighted up at once, and he returned the man's grip with 
cordial interest. 

Uncle Jesse was glorified by his son's presence, and 
made the general uncomfortable by his grossly evident 
pride and pleasure. All the dark past was forgotten 
now ; the sad days of his son's defeats eleven years before 
were as though they had never been. The mother, how- 
ever, received Ulysses with unchanged manner. Nothing 
seemed to surprise her. His victories she accepted as 
matters of natural course, and she went about the house 
with the calm, unhurried step which had never varied from 
year to year. For all her mask of face, she was very 
proud of her boy. 

The general took a team, one morning, and started to 
drive quietly to Bethel, some twenty miles away. But 
the people of his old homes in Brown and Clermont counties 
were astir. They got together, and hastily appointed a 
committee of prominent citizens to ride out and meet the 
illustrious soldier. After riding some miles on the road 
without seeing any signs of the general's party, they con- 
cluded he must have taken another road. 

While discussing this, a smallish, care-worn man came 
jogging along the dusty road in a light surrey. To him 
they appealed : 

" Did you hear anything about General Grant as you 
came along? " 

"Yes; he 's on the road," replied the stranger, and 
drove on. 



340 LIFE OF GRANT 

After he had passed out of ear-shot, some one said : 
" I believe that was Grant himself." 

It was, and the deeply disappointed committee trailed 
into town behind their visitor. They were looking for a 
man in uniform with a glittering cavalcade of aides. They 
could not understand how sweet it was to General Grant 
to ride out along those familiar fields in fruity September, 
a civilian again, without reminder of war. The visit to 
West Point had not the deep-laid pleasure he found in this 
lonely drive. 

The citizens demanded a speech ; but he had no speech 
to make. He had no wish to meet crowds ; he wanted to 
talk with the neighbors. From Bethel he drove on to 
Georgetown in the same fashion, and put up at the very 
humble little hotel of the village. Georgetown greeted 
him with very marked self-repression. A large number 
of the villagers were " peace Democrats," and were not 
prepared to throw up their hats for " Ulyss " Grant or any 
other Republican. They recalled Grant's dullness when 
a boy ; they talked among themselves of his forced resig- 
nation from the army, and of his reported drinking at 
Shiloh and Corinth. There were those who said : " I '11 
be d — d if I attend any meeting in his honor." 

If the general knew anything of these unplanned criti- 
cisms, he made no sign of it. He met everybody with 
cordial hand-clasp, and threaded the paths which ran 
through vacant lots covered with cockle-burs and muUen 
stalks to call upon lonely old spinsters who had known his 
mother, and whom he remembered very well himself. 
He sat in their tiny little parlors, on their worn haircloth 
furniture, and ate of their indigestible cake and pie with 
ready cheer, and in one or two instances presented old 
friends with a big gold piece as a further mark of his 
regard. He seemed anxious to meet all the old people, 
no matter how surly and crabbed they might be. He had 
forgotten all their bad traits, and all their bitter words. 
They were all homely and good to him. 

He was for the time being a citizen of the village, and 
there are not many social distinctions drawn in George- 
town, even to this day. They considered themselves as 



THE GENERAL TAKES A SUMMER VACATION 34 1 

good as Ulysses Grant, and quite capable of criticizing him 
and of giving him good advice. They did not stand in 
awe of princes or potentates of any sort, and Grant, in his 
dusty hat and cockle-bur-decorated trousers, was not im- 
posing to them. The world from which he came was all 
too far away and its distinction too insubstantial for these 
old neighbors occupied with tilling the soil, with daily 
duty in shop and office. They could not appreciate the 
mighty power to which Ulysses Grant had attained. In 
their secret hearts many of them said : " It 's just bHnd 
luck ; that is what it is. Circumstances made him. I 
could have done the same thing under the same circum- 
stances." 

The demonstration was carried to a reasonable stage, and 
the general made a lame little speech, the longest he had 
made in all these many receptions and ovations in cities 
East and West. He seemed more profoundly touched by 
the recognition of his services in Georgetown than by any 
other demonstration except that in Galena. He knew 
how skeptical all his old neighbors had been. He remem- 
bered how they had ridiculed his fond old father, and how 
they had wagged their heads at his failures. All this he 
knew, and, being human, he was glad to be able to dem- 
onstrate his power and fitness for command, after all. 

Returning to Washington in October, he took up his 
home on I Street. In doing this he offered to surrender 
the house in Philadelphia, which had been given him with 
an understanding that he was to live there. But the citi- 
zens of Philadelphia very sensibly said : " We know you 
must live near headquarters, and we release you from all 
obligations. The house is yours to use as you please." 

As the months passed the certainty that peace had 
returned, never to be broken, led the people. North and 
South, to turn their almost undivided attention to produc- 
tion and to trade; but the politicians began to plan for 
the next Presidential campaign, and statesmen in private 
gravely grappled with the puzzling questions growing out 
of the war. The government debt, the protection and 
enfranchisement of the negro, and the policy of recon- 
struction were the then almost insoluble problems to 



342 LIFE OF GRANT 

which the lawmakers were forced to address their highest 
powers. 

The question of who should be President also troubled 
a large number of patriots. Every man prominent in war 
or politics secretly wished to be President, if he did not 
actually set to work to secure the nomination ; Johnson, 
Stanton, Seward, Sumner, and a score besides were all 
working to that end ; but the " silent general " went about 
his duties without regard to fear or favor. His actions 
were rigidly non-political, though he had keen politicians 
in his family and on his staff. Rawlins began to fill his 
ears with disturbing words of political wisdom. It did not 
require much prophetic insight on his part to perceive 
that his chief was to become a candidate for the Presi- 
dency. The republic had always honored its great com- 
manders, from Washington down to Taylor, and Grant, 
supreme as warrior, was in the logical line of succession. 
But, whatever his own feeling in the matter, he closed his 
lips even to his friends. He was a soldier, and waited for 
orders. 

Johnson well knew all this, and all he did was done 
with an eye single to securing the glory to himself. When 
Grant's words and acts furthered Johnson's interests, 
Johnson used them ; when they did not, he distorted them, 
and secretly undermined and discredited his general-in- 
chief. When he thought it might please the North, he 
cried out: "Treason is odious; punish it"; but when he 
saw the possibility of being selected for the Presidency by 
the aid of the Southern States, he reversed his policy, and 
began to truckle and trade for favor. He granted the 
most extraordinary privileges to the conquered States 
without the sanction of Congress. He appointed gover- 
nors, and allowed their legislatures to assemble. He as- 
serted, also, that when a State acquiesced in the abolition 
of slavery, it could send its senators and congressional 
delegates to Washington on the same terms as before the 
war; and upon these promises and policies of the Presi- 
dent the South built, notwithstanding the bitter opposi- 
tion of the majority of Northern people. 

The President was eager to keep Grant near him in all 



THE GENERAL TAKES A SUMMER VACATION 343 

these plans. Congress could not meet until December, 
and meanwhile the South was under martial control, and 
he, as commander of the army and navy, had the fullest 
freedom to work out his plan, which he hoped would make 
the South solidly his and please the Democratic party in 
the North. Grant apparently acquiesced in this, because 
(as he said) he considered some gov^ernment necessary, and 
believed that Congress, when it convened, would either 
support or reverse it. He, as a soldier, had nothing to do 
with civil politics. Before the ist of October the Presi- 
dent had " flopped " completely, and had become as deeply 
anxious to pardon the leaders in the Rebellion as he had 
been to hang them a few months before. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION* 

IN late November the general, at the request of the 
President, made a tour through the South to obtain 
a knowledge of the situation at first hand. He visited 
Charleston, Augusta, Atlanta, and several other cities. In 
some of the towns his presence escaped notice. In 
Charleston the papers referred to the demonstration in his 
honor as " gloomy " and " thinly attended." In Augusta 
they spoke of him as a " diminutive gentleman in black 
civilian dress." 

In Atlanta, without the knowledge of the citizens, he 
took a carriage, and was driven quietly about the streets 
through the pelting rain, his slouch-hat drawn over his 
brow, studying the city and the people. The few citi- 
zens hurrying to and fro on that stormy day dismissed 
the silent figure in the carriage with a glance. They saw 
only a middle-aged man of business, driving about with an 
officer of the Union army. His careless attire, his appa- 
rently listless manner, made him quite inconspicuous. 

But when the word was passed that General Grant was 
in town, Federal officers, ex-Confederates, Union sympa- 
thizers, and the unreconstructed, as well, came to talk 
with him at his hotel. To one and all he listened with 
grave attention. Indignant loyalists told him that the 

* In writing this chapter, the author read the newspapers of the time, 
selecting three typical examples in the South and four or five in the Nortli. 
McPherson's " History of Reconstruction," United States Executive Papers, 
Badeau's " Grant in Peace," and the memoirs of Sherman. Sheridan, and 
Schofield form the main references. 

344 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 345 

rebels hated the old flag, and threatened violence to the 
Unionists. 

" It is natural," was his only reply. 

Some wild schemers suggested confiscation, disfranchise- 
ment, and military rule. " We don't do that way in 
America," he calmly said. 

An old man referred feelingly to the bad blood engen- 
dered by the war. 

" It cannot last," said the general. And of this quality 
was his report. In it he said : " I am satisfied that the 
mass of thinking men in the South accept the present 
situation of affairs in good faith." 

While he found universal acquiescence in authority, he 
thought it well to retain some small garrisons, and rec- 
ommended that these details be composed entirely of 
white troops; that, under the circumstances, the presence 
of black troops would be demoralizing. He conceded that 
no thinking man would do violence toward any class of 
troops, but that the ignorant might. His conclusions 
were that the States were anxious to return to self-gov- 
ernment, that they wished protection, and that they would 
follow out cheerfully any reasonable measure of recon- 
struction. He passed some criticisms upon the operations 
of the Freedmen's Bureau, and in conclusion said: "It 
cannot be expected that the opinions held by men of the 
South for years can be changed in a day, and therefore 
the freedmen require for a few years not only laws to pro- 
tect them, but the fostering care of those who will give 
them good counsel and upon whom they can rely." His 
own suggestion (a very sound and reasonable one) was 
that every officer on duty with troops in the South 
"should be regarded as an agent of the Freedmen's 
Bureau. This would create responsibility and give uni- 
formity of action throughout the South." 

In the country at large the report of General Grant was 
taken to be an indorsement and support of the restoration 
views of President Johnson, and placed him in opposition 
to the party of Congress represented by Wendell Phillips 
and Senator Sumner, who called the President's message 
a " whitewashing message," and of course the same term 



346 LIFE OF GRANT 

could be applied, and was applied, to General Grant's 
dispassionate report. According to one Southern writer, 
its effect was very great. 

" It broke the full force of the cruel legislation then in 
progress, and the enemies of the South were compelled to 
change their attack. Demagogues were powerless when 
the man of Appomattox barred their reckless march." 

This report brought order out of the chaos of public 
opinion. The people of the whole nation ranged them- 
selves under leadership into two great parties — those who 
professed to believe in the policy of the immediate pacifi- 
cation of the South by the speedy restoration of their local 
governments, and those who advocated stringent and un- 
relenting military control for a few years at least. It was 
the war in a new form. 

General Grant's report was quoted all over the South 
with approval in connection with the President's message. 
Johnson was glad of General Grant's unintentional sup- 
port, and made the most of it. He no longer cared to 
emphasize differences between himself and his general. 
Within a few months a complete change had come over 
his mind. From permitting provisional governments to be 
established, he was coming to the point of upholding those 
governments, whether by Congress or not. He was a 
shrewd man, and an ambitious one. It was perfectly evi- 
dent at this time that he was reorganizing the country in 
such wise as to become the leader of the ultra-liberal fac- 
tion. He was looking forward to being the Presidential 
candidate of a new Democratic party, made up of a union 
between the reconstructed South and the Democratic party 
of the North. 

He protested that he was not himself a candidate. " I 
am a Union man," he said. " It is my intention to restore 
peace, to build up the South, to liberalize the whole nation." 
He claimed to be a friend of the poor and needy. He did 
not think it wise or judicious to force suffrage on the 
negroes, and in this he had the partial support of General 
Grant. " In his haste to restore the Union, however, he 
forgot that he was not the government of the United 
States. He forgot the necessity of having Congress on 
his side, that his acts must have their approval." 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 347 

It became apparent at once that his measures were not 
approved by a majority of the legal representatives of the 
nation, and a bitter and relentless war began between Con- 
gress and the President. By March of 1866 the drift of 
the Executive from magnanimity to leniency had become 
so apparent to General Grant that he found it necessary to 
begin to emphasize a little more markedly the difference 
between the President's plan of reconstruction and his own. 
It is probable, also, that Rawlins, Babcock, and others of 
the politicians on his staff had produced an effect by harp- 
ing on the belief that he was to be the irresistible choice 
for the Presidency at the end of Johnson's term. This 
would have been very natural, and was probably true. 
He admitted his aspirations at this time, but said he was 
too young to become a candidate in 1868, but might think 
of it for 1872. 

It was a time which demanded statesmen and men of 
high aims and equable temper. The whole country lay 
weltering in a chaos of plans and policies. It was a time 
for men to be unselfish and purely patriotic. The South 
clamored, with a certain justice, to be let alone. " We 
understand the negro," its leaders said, " and we will take 
care of him and ourselves too. We admit defeat; we 
accept the situation; but we do not wish to have our 
affairs managed by outsiders in the interest of an ignorant 
and venal race." It was equally natural that the North 
should insist on keeping close watch on these States for a 
time. They were not prepared to believe that the South 
would take care of the negro ; they were quite certain the 
South would abuse the negro. They said, in effect: " It 
is too much to expect that a conquered people should so 
soon recover self-government after so great and bitter a 
conflict." They believed that justice would more certainly 
be secured if the Northern government should continue 
to be represented through its army and the Freedmen's 
Bureau, which was organized for the very purpose of 
assisting the blacks. 

In this matter of opinion General Grant remained of 
steadfast mind. He was not impatient ; he was very 
hopeful. He did not incline to severer measures, but 
rather believed in slowly releasing the military hold on the 



348 LIFE OF GRANT 

conquered States. He refused to aid any faction by the 
presence of troops. He wished only to keep the peace. 
On the surface, President Johnson's attitude was wise 
and reasonable ; but those at the center, being skilled in 
political warfare, understood his specious phrases. His 
perilous concessions to the South could only make trouble. 
General Grant now stood between the President and the 
South with a new duty to perform, which was to see that 
dangerous concessions were not made, nor the extremists 
of the South correspondingly encouraged to treasonable 
action. 

The President, well knowing his great need of General 
Grant's support, honored him above all other men by his 
presence. He wrote him familiar, unofficial notes ; he 
granted him unexpected favors, treating him not merely 
as an equal, but as a personal friend. He appeared unex- 
pectedly at a reception held by the general and Mrs. 
Grant, and stood at the general's side, dividing the honors 
of the evening. In the country at large this course of 
action produced the effect desired by Johnson. General 
Grant was believed to be the President's supporter, and 
was placed in a very painful position — an almost intoler- 
able position for a direct and honorable soldier. He was 
violently assailed by the press. He was accused of play- 
ing a double game. He suffered undtr this most keenly. 
Sherman said of him at this time : 

" I have been with General Grant in the midst of death 
and slaughter; when the howls of people reached him 
after Shiloh ; when messengers were speeding to and fro 
from his army to Washington, bearing slanders to induce 
his removal before Vicksburg; in Chattanooga, when the 
soldiers were stealing the corn of the starving mules to 
satisfy their own hunger; at Nashville, when he was 
ordered to the ' forlorn hope,' to command the Army of 
the Potomac, so often defeated ; and yet I never saw 
him more troubled than since he has been in Washing- 
ton and been compelled to read himself a ' sneak and 
deceiver.' " 

It seems impossible that so soon after Appomattox any 
reputable citizen could have applied such terms to Gen- 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 349 

eral Grant ; but so it was. Such is the desolating power 
of political ambition. Grant loomed every day larger as 
candidate for the Presidency, and the need of getting him 
out of the way, or of discrediting him, became each day 
more imperative. 

The fundamental problem before Congress was that of 
protecting the black man in his rights as a free man, and 
of insuring that he should have his proper representation 
in the State legislatures and in Congress, without enlar- 
ging the political power of the Southern white man. All 
other differences between the President and the radical 
Republicans were of small consequence compared with 
this. The President was accused of exceeding his powers 
— of going too fast. He was too ready in compliance with 
Southern plans. 

Johnson, in defending himself, said: 

" I came to Washington under extraordinary circum- 
stances, and succeeded to the Presidential chair. The 
Congress of the United States had adjourned without 
prescribing any plan. I therefore proceeded in the recon- 
struction of the government. How did we begin ? We 
found that the people had no courts, and we said to the 
judges, district attorneys, and marshals: 'Go down and 
hold your courts. The people need the tribunals of jus- 
tice.' Was there anything wrong in that? 

" What else ? We looked out and saw that the people 
down there had no mails, and we said to the Postmaster- 
General : ' Let the people have facilities for mail, and let 
them again understand what we all feel and think — that 
we are one people. 

" We looked again, and saw that the custom-houses were 
all closed, and we said : ' Open the doors ; remove the 
blockade.' And so we traveled on, appointing collectors, 
establishing mail routes, and restoring railroads. Was 
there anything wrong there ? 

"What remained to be done? One thing more. We 
found they were denied representation, and, like our fore- 
fathers of old, they complained of taxation without repre- 
sentation. There remains this one thing more: to admit 
them to representation, by which we mean representation 



350 LIFE OF GRANT 

in the constitutional and law-abiding sense which was un- 
derstood at the beginning of the government. 

" Oh, but some one will say : ' A traitor may come in.* 
The answer to that is: Each house must be the judge of 
it, and if a traitor presents himself, they can kick him out 
of doors, and drive him back to the people who sent him, 
saying, ' You must elect a loyal man.' " 

Upon the mere face of it this position was just and 
reasonable ; but the radical Union men saw in such appeal 
the possible return to power of the South, and the over- 
throw of all that they had fought for during the last four 
years. General Grant, so far as possible, kept free from 
the clash of spears, passing calmly on his way, doing the 
South good wherever possible, but never for one moment 
releasing his hold upon the military control of the con- 
quered States. 

In the early spring of 1866 there was a notable upwell- 
ing of appreciation of his courtesy and kindness on the 
part of the South. Speaking upon the text of his reported 
release of General C. C. Clay, whom Johnson had ordered 
under arrest, in opposition to or in spite of his possession 
of a parole, the Atlanta " Intelligencer" said: 

" While it is true that to General Grant the South owes 
her defeat in her attempt to establish an independent 
government, it is also true that at the surrender of General 
Lee, and ever since, up to the present time, his conduct 
toward the South has been most generous and in individual 
cases most magnanimous and just. The South owes much 
to General Grant, and its press has been too chary and tardy 
in its acknowledgment of the favors bestowed by this gen- 
eral upon the leaders of our armies. We should now make 
the amends. History does not make record of greater 
magnanimity than that displayed by General Grant to 
General Lee and the forces under his command. The 
faith plighted by him on the day of Lee's surrender has 
been kept inviolate." 

This acknowledgment on the part of the " Intelligencer" 
was taken up, quoted, and approved by many of the most 
influential papers in the South, though even then they did 
not realize to the full the service which General Grant had 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 35 I 

rendered them. He had done much more, of which they 
knew nothing. Every word that he spoke was to their 
good, and his mere presence was a stay and shield against 
hasty or mahgnant action. Too high praise cannot be 
given to him for his conduct during this uneasy time. As 
he was the leader during the war, so he remained the 
leader during reconstruction. 

" My views are that district commanders are responsible 
for the faithful execution of the Reconstruction Acts of 
Congress," the general wrote to General Pope, " but in 
civil matters I cannot give them an order; I can only give 
them my views for what they are worth." 

His views, so far as they can be read in his orders and 
telegrams to the district commander, were sound and con- 
siderate of civil liberty at every point, without hint of 
tyranny. The civil government was interfered with only 
when absolutely necessary to preserve the peace. It 
would have been criminal to desert the black man at this 
point in the war. " The blood of every slain soldier in 
the Northern armv would have cried 'Shame!' to such 
indifference." The war, fought primarily to preserve the 
Union, had taken on larger significance. It was perceived 
to have been a war for the rights of man. 

All through the summer of 1866 President Johnson 
continued to give utterance to the finest and loftiest prin- 
ciples. He stood, he said, for the whole Union, and not 
a part of it. He stood opposed to the radicalism, ex- 
pressed by men of the stamp of Sumner in the East and 
Logan in the West — men to whom the war was not yet 
ended, who could not forgive the South nor trust it. 

He still kept, so far as he could, close to the elbow of 
General Grant. He was eager to have it known that the 
military was on his side, that its chief was his personal 
friend and supporter, and throughout the South this con- 
tinued to be the understanding. The Southern papers, 
wherever they alluded to Johnson, now spoke of him as 
the " great defender of our rights and liberties," and in- 
cluded General Grant in their praise. 

But underneath there was developing a feeling on the 
part of General Grant and those whom he represented that 



352 LIFE OF GRANT 

the President was more than generous : he was perilously 
compliant. The general became disgusted at last with 
the President's attempt to use him, and was annoyed by 
his familiar notes and unexpected visits. He perceived 
the design of this, and rebelled at it. It was only a ques- 
tion of time before there should come a division between 
the general and his chief. The Southern press grew 
bolder each day, relying on Johnson and his office-holders. 
During September the President made a trip to Chicago, 
ostensibly for the purpose of laying the foundation-stone 
of the Douglas monument, but in reality for the express 
purpose of justifying himself before the people. 

From the comparative calm which had followed close 
upon Appomattox, the country was in tumult. The 
" black Republicans," angered by Johnson, were threaten- 
ing with clenched fists to force negro suffrage upon the 
South, and were insisting upon military control until 
every right of the negro should be recognized. The 
South, on the other hand, minimized the racial disturb- 
ances, and promised that in time, when he had qualified 
himself, they might even permit the negro to vote. They 
were, however, exceedingly bitter against any assumption 
of social equality on the part of the black man, and wher- 
ever some ambitious and stifT-necked freedman attempted 
to assert such rights, he met with abuse and in some cases 
with assault. 

Thus the two sections were again at war, but at war in 
a new way. The North said : " You shall not come back 
into the Union with increased powers." The South 
claimed that, according to the Northern statement, the 
Southern States had never been out of the Union, and 
having accepted the verdict of the North, and having 
given in their allegiance once more to the stars and stripes, 
they were entitled to full representation, as the articles of 
the Constitution provided. The policy of the North was 
to grant as little as possible, and that of the South to 
secure as much as possible. 

President Johnson took the position that the latter were 
entitled to representation, and the fury of the extremists 
in the North broke over him like a flood of flame. He 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 353 

was called a traitor, an ingrate, a miscreant, and a perverter 
of justice. Naturally he was appalled by this storm of 
opposition, and it was to put himself right before the 
Northern people that he set out upon this trip to the 
West, speaking at every available point ; and in order to 
have the apparent acquiescence and open support of Gen- 
eral Grant, he requested the general-in-chief to accompany 
him. 

The political friends of General Grant saw the cunning 
design of the President, and besought the general to break 
with him and refuse to go ; but the general replied in sub- 
stance : "I am a soldier; he is my superior officer. So 
long as I retain my present position, it is my duty to 
obey." At the same time he said : " I am not a politician ; 
I am not a candidate for office ; and therefore it can do 
me little harm." 

The President began his tour late in August, passing to 
Baltimore and Philadelphia, speaking along the way. It 
became evident at once that General Grant was the chief 
personality in this tour. The heartiest cheers were for 
him ; the receptions were for him. Everywhere he went, 
the people cried : " Grant ! Grant ! " and never once did the 
President's clique dominate this cordial appeal from the 
people who loved Grant. At New York the President 
made a very skilful speech, referring now to General 
Grant on his left, and now to Admiral Farragut on his 
right, succeeding thus in implicating them both in his 
policy. To this Grant made no allusion whatever in his 
short speeches, except at Albany, when he humorously 
said : 

" All I can say is, if the President and his cabinet had 
kept their resolution, made in secret session, to leave the 
admiral and myself to do all the talking, we would have 
let you off to go to an early bed." He never got nearer 
to a political discussion than this. 

As the President went westward the receptions grew 
ever cooler in temper. There were great crowds, but 
they were by no means friendly to him or his policy. 
" The real Cassar was General Grant. The calls for the 
President were languid and perfunctory, but the cries for 



354 LIFE OF GRANT 

Grant came straight from the heart." When he did not 
immediately show himself, " the shouts became short, 
sharp, and angry, which signified it was the people's will 
that he should appear." 

At Auburn, a little boy, in attempting to touch General 
Grant's hand, fell under the carriage and had his leg 
broken. Shortly afterward, from his home, the poor little 
sufferer sent word that he wished very much to see Gen- 
eral Grant ; and the general, being exceedingly sorrowful 
concerning the accident, visited him, and did everything 
he could to comfort and console him. 

At Cleveland the indifference manifested toward the 
President was very great, and he there made the angriest 
and most imprudent speech of his tour thus far. " It was 
a most painful spectacle to see the President of the United 
States standing on the platform, facing a laughing and 
indifferent crowd, his face flushed with passion, his hands 
clenching and waving in mad gesticulation." General 
Grant was ill and unable to appear, and his absence chilled 
the eager throng, which dwindled away. 

In Chicago discussion waxed bitter. The radical news- 
papers ridiculed and denounced the President's speeches 
at Detroit and Cleveland. It was with difficulty that the 
board of trade and the city officials were brought to proffer 
decent welcome. It was said boldly that public interest 
would center in General Grant and Admiral Farragut. 
Their marvelous faculty of silence was alluded to with joy. 
The President, Seward, Welles, and Randall occupied the 
foreground ; but the cry, amid all the blare of formalities, 
was for Grant. 

At the same time that President Johnson was making 
his attempts to reinstate himself with the people of the 
North, a convention of the loyal men of the South was 
arraigning the President, accusing him of profligacy in the 
use of the public money, and charging him with the re- 
sponsibility of the murder of more than a thousand Union 
men. This same feeling found expression in hisses among 
the crowds in Chicago. But there were no hisses intended 
for General Grant. His wonderful popularity overshad- 
owed every other demonstration. 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 355 

At Springfield, Illinois, the calls for Grant were so 
insistent and powerful that the President quite lost his 
head, and cried out, " We are not here in the characters 
of candidates for office running against each other!" — 
which was a very dangerous and injudicious remark. 
Again, to those disposed to create a disturbance, he 
shouted : " I am in the line with General Grant, contending 
for the union of the States." 

The tour from Chicago through Illinois to St. Louis 
was a gloomy one. Everywhere Johnson was given a cold 
reception, while Grant's simplicity of manner and judicious 
reserve added to his popularity, although the people were 
impatient of his silence. 

From St. Louis the President and his party swung round 
through Indianapolis and Louisville to Cincinnati. The 
meetings in Indianapolis were very turbulent, amounting 
to riot. General Grant rebuked the disturbers by saying : 
" Gentlemen, I am ashamed of you. Go home and be 
ashamed of yourselves." In Cincinnati the demonstra- 
tions for him became so marked, and the defection from 
the President so great, that the general was obliged to 
utter himself upon the subject. He here said that he stood 
next to the President as the head of the army of the 
United States, but that he was not the leader of a political 
party ; that he did not consider the army a place for a 
politician, and would not, therefore, be committed to the 
support of the present political party, or consent that the 
army should be made a party machine. He would not 
allow anything to be said which would seem to foreshadow 
his resignation from the army and his candidacy for 
political office. 

During the entire trip the President and Mr. Seward 
gave out implications and innuendos designed to convey 
the impression that General Grant was a political approver 
of the President's policy, while the radicals everywhere 
sought out ways to honor him and to humiliate the Presi- 
dent. They were determined to force a break between 
them. All this made matters extremely difficult for 
General Grant. 

The meeting in Pittsburg was stormy, almost as riotous 



356 LIFE OF GRANT 

as that in Indianapolis. At times the noise became too 
great for the President to be heard. Cries for Grant pre- 
vented the President from speaking, and he was obHged to 
beci<on to the general, who stood near, to come to the 
front of the platform. Cheers broke forth as Grant ap- 
peared, and continued as long as he stood there ; but when 
he bowed and retired, the President found it impossible to 
get a further hearing, and was forced to say " Good 
night " and withdraw. 

On September 15 Johnson returned to Washington. To 
the throngs assembled to greet him on his safe return he 
said : 

" Such a welcome from the people who have been eye- 
witnesses of the manner in which I have daily discharged 
my duties is peculiarly encouraging. I believe I can 
testify that the great portion of your fellow-citizens I have 
seen — and I have seen millions of them since I left — will 
accord with you in sustaining a free government in com- 
pliance with the Constitution"; which was a very hopeful 
view to take after the stormy meetings which had greeted 
him on his circuit. Even his supporting journals con- 
ceded that his trip had been a gross blunder and his 
speeches in bad taste. 

General Grant returned to his multiplex and pressing 
duties, from which he had been taken by the President's 
command. His pay now was nearly twenty thousand 
dollars a year. His children were well and at school. 
He was at home in the capital of his nation, and the cup of 
his prosperity was level to the brim. He had good horses 
in plenty, a house in Philadelphia and one in Galena. If 
happiness depended upon things exterior, he was happy 
and quite content. He had a life position, and could 
grow old honorably and without financial care. 

He had been made full general in the previous May by 
a bill reviving the grade of general in the United States 
army. This bill was originally drafted by Mr. Washburne 
of Illinois as a means of promoting General Grant. Thad 
Stevens, in speaking to the measure, said : 

" Sir, I agree with the gentleman from New York in 
being willing to promote General Grant, not only to the 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 357 

office of full general, but also to a higher office whenever 
the happy moment shall arrive." 

The struggle between the President and Congress grew 
each month more bitter. The election strengthened 
Congress, and the plan decided upon by the Republican 
members was expressed in an amendment to the Consti- 
tution, known as " Article XIV," of which the main intent 
was the protection of the freedmen. It provided also, in a 
rider, that in case any Southern State admitted to repre- 
sentation under the clauses of this article should deny 
the right, under any pretext, of a black citizen to vote, 
then the basis of representation of that State should be 
the white citizenship alone. In this way the white South 
could never become a dominant power in Congress. 

As soon as it became evident that the South would 
reject this, then a far more severe and arbitrary measure 
was designed, called the " Military Bill." This was held 
in reserve till the South, influenced by the President, re- 
jected Article XIV. It was then passed over the veto of 
the President. The North had become convinced by the 
legislation of the State governments of Mississippi and 
South Carolina that the negro needed the most powerful 
protection. 

The bill assumed that there were no just and adequate 
governments in the States of Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, 
Florida, Texas, and Arkansas; and in order that peace 
and good order should be enforced in these States until 
loyal and republican State governments could be legally 
instituted, it provided that five military districts should 
be established, under the command of officers not below 
the rank of brigadier-general, appointed by the President ; 
and that it should be the duty of these officers to protect 
the rights, life, liberty, and person of all citizens; that 
no unusual or cruel punishment should be inflicted ; that 
no sentence of death should be carried into execution 
without the approval of the President ; etc. 

The milk in this cocoanut was contained in the final 
paragraph, which provided that " whenever these States 
should have formed a constitution and government in con- 



3S8 LIFE OF GRANT 

formity with the Constitution of the United States in all 
respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by 
the male citizens over twenty-one years of age, of what- 
ever race or color," and should ratify the Fourteenth 
Amendment by a majority of the qualified voters, then 
the Military Bill should become inoperative in that State. 

It will thus be seen that the Military Bill not merely 
insisted that the South respect the civil rights and enfran- 
chise the negro, but set a military government over the 
people to induce them to accept the inevitable. The 
North was determined. It said: "You must respect the 
rights of the negro; you must include him in your basis 
of representation, and you must admit him or his repre- 
sentatives to a share in your State deliberations, and to 
your delegations to Congress." 

Naturally, the South cried out against this " terrible 
measure." It claimed that the premises of the bill were 
utterly wrong; that the fires of hate and rebellion were 
not still burning in the South ; that Union men and 
negroes were not persecuted ; that while occasional in- 
stances of assault and terrorism occurred, still they were 
the exception, and not the rule. The press all over the 
South claimed that the people were eager for peace, and 
eager for a return to perfect union with the North. They 
did not, however, admit the right of the national govern- 
ment to pass upon the qualifications of their voters, and 
they could not bring themselves to a consideration of 
placing the ballot in the hands of the poor, ignorant, 
simple-minded Africans among them. 

In the midst of the almost universal dissent of the 
Southern leaders. General Longstreet upheld the measures 
which were included under the Reconstruction Acts and 
Military Bill. In a letter to a Unionist in New Orleans, 
he said : 

I shall be happy to work under any measure that promises to 
bring the glory of peace and good will toward men. The sword 
has decided in favor of the North, and what they claim as prin- 
ciples cease to be principles and are become law. It is, therefore, 
our duty to abandon ideas that are obsolete, and conform to the 
requirements of law. 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 359 

Here was a man, not only brave and outspoken in his 
own right, but a man who stood close to General Grant, 
and knew to the full his fairness and justice. Could all 
the leaders of the South have taken General Longstreet's 
view, reconstruction would have been possible without 
further bloodshed. It was not to be. The waves of war 
must break and die again and again on the beach of time. 

Wendell Phillips well expressed the extreme radical 
Northern position in a speech in Chicago : 

" Had Jefferson Davis succeeded, he would have had a 
right to enforce his doctrine. We conquered, and we 
have a right to enforce ours. Our President is a traitor. 
He is laboring to save the South from the consequences 
of her defeat. Once put Southern statesmen inside the 
Capitol, and we give them power to fight the battle over 
again inside the government. I do not want to punish 
Johnson ; all that I want is his room. The seeds of recon- 
struction will not grow in a day ; the South is not going 
to give up the struggle in a day. What we need is North- 
ern men at the seat of government." 

Referring to Grant's repeated utterances that he was a 
soldier, and not a politician, Phillips savagely said : 

" Grant, the most loved man in America, when he said, 
' I put on the uniform of no party,' fell in the estimation 
of the people. He is the high constable of the nation. 
He is paid to make our flag respected in New Orleans. 
If he does not do it, he fails in his duty." 

The orator ended by calling the bill for the miUtary 
government of the South " a makeshift and a thing of no 
account." 

In such a time as this no living man could have pleased 
all parties. Bitter and burning passions were uppermost, 
both North and South. General Grant continued to hold 
the balance between the extremists. His natural tempera- 
ment was that of calmness and justice. He angered many 
Northern friends by his mildness and tolerance, while 
every military order he issued looking to the better govern- 
ment of the Southern States was resented and criticized. 
With all his gentleness and dislike of armed battalions, he 
did not allow himself to forget that a bloody war had just 



360 LIFE OF GRANT 

ended, and that firmness and decision of action were abso- 
lutely necessary in dealing with the conquered States. 

He was even then the chief man of the nation, and no 
Southron of importance since the close of the war had 
visited Washington without presenting himself to General 
Grant. To all these he had profTered the same advice. 
To every one he had spoken very plainly. He had de- 
clared himself to be their friend, and as their friend he 
had warned them that the North was aroused and deter- 
mined, and if the Fourteenth Article were rejected, 
harsher terms would surely follow. He had entreated 
with them, for the sake of the Union, for the sake of 
peace, to accept the situation. 

As the Military Bill originally passed the House, the 
power of appointing the commanders was arbitrarily taken 
from the hands of the President and given over to General 
Grant ; and it was further provided that the general should 
not be removed during the term of Andrew Johnson's 
presidency. It was designed to make the operation of 
the bill entirely independent of the President, whom the 
Republicans considered a traitor, and whom they were 
even then planning to impeach. They were unwilling 
to trust his rule, and were unable to bring him to trial. 
But their faith in General Grant knew no limit. They 
were quite willing to give him the most dangerous degree 
of power ever intrusted to an American. 

This final clause, however, at the general's own request, 
was stricken out by the Senate, and the appointments left 
where they belonged, in the hands of the President and 
the Secretary of War, with the advice and consent of 
General Grant. Even then Grant's power was almost 
absolute over eleven States of the Union. By the terms 
of the bill he held in his hand the fate of every officer, 
almost of every individual, in these States. With any 
other man at the head of such a system the South might 
well have been alarmed. They seemed not to have been 
profoundly uneasy so long as Andrew Johnson and Gen- 
eral Grant controlled the actual working out of the measure. 
They feared no tyranny at the hands of the general-in- 
chief, though they cried out against the rule of the 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 361 

" understrappers " and " buckle-polishers " of this military 
despotism. They did not know until long after that the bill 
was drawn with the advice and consent of General Grant. 

When the bill passed by a heavy vote over the veto 
message of President Johnson, the South accepted the 
defeat. " We are powerless now under the heel of mili- 
tary despots. We must accept the situation as it stands. 
Resistance would be worse than folly ; it would be mad- 
ness. The issue before our people now is not whether 
the negro shall have the right of suffrage extended to 
them, or not ; that has been settled by stern decree, and 
we must govern ourselves accordingly." 

Other papers contained articles headed, " General Grant 
the Hope of the South." " Our only resource now is the 
magnanimity of those who know the perils of battle and 
the trials of the camp. They alone can estimate rightly 
the blessings of peace and harmony. Grant is endeared 
to them by all the associations of successful war. His 
dauntless courage is written in the history of bloody cam- 
paigns. His magnanimity at Lee's surrender touched 
every Southerner. Repeated acts of generosity and kind- 
ness adorn his intercourse with us. In the midst of 
troubles and anxieties and menaces he has been just. 
His love of constitutional liberty is not less than his valor 
and magnanimity. When the enactment of Congress 
vested in him the sole power to enforce the existing mili- 
tary law, he voluntarily subjected all acts and all proceed- 
ings to the approval of the President " ; and looking forward 
to his possible candidacy for the Presidency, one article 
concluded by asking: " Could there be a greater peace- 
offering by the soldiers of the South to their victorious 
brethren in the North than Ulysses S. Grant?" 

This article was also quoted with approval by other 
papers, and at about the same time General Lee publicly 
expressed a decided hope that the Union of the States 
might endure for all time, and further declared that he 
regarded the course of President Johnson and General 
Grant as liberal and humane. He also counseled submis- 
sion to the law. He could have done much to restore 
good feeling, but he remained coldly negative. 



362 LIFE OF GRANT 

General Grant's course continued to be conservative 
and just. The military commanders selected by him, 
with the advice of Johnson and Stanton, were considered 
wise, and in his instructions to these commanders, and in 
all subsequent letters to them, he counseled moderation 
and forbearance toward the people of the South. No 
assault upon his action, and no exasperation of turbulent 
mobs in the South, could render him vindictive. His 
whole mind seemed set on rebuilding the nation, with the 
least military interference consistent with insuring peace 
and tranquillity to both races. When the provocations 
to arbitrary exercise of power were greatest, the Southern 
press was forced to acknowledge that no man had suffered 
a deliberate injustice at the hands of General Grant. That 
the malcontents held him in wholesome respect is also 
certain. He admitted no trifling. 

At the same time the Northern radicals looked to him 
to check the reckless course of the President. The first 
collision between them had taken place in October of the 
previous year, just before the autumn elections. At the 
time trouble seemed likely to follow between the State 
authorities of Maryland, which were friendly to Johnson, 
and those of the city of Baltimore. The governor had 
appealed to the President for armed assistance, and John- 
son had made several attempts to induce General Grant 
to send United States troops into the State. Grant had 
protested very earnestly against this, declaring that no 
reason existed for giving or promising military aid to 
support the laws of Maryland. He had then visited the city 
and conferred with the police commissioners, and through 
his influence the questions in dispute had been left to a 
decision of the court. This incident, however, had con- 
vinced Grant that Johnson was quite capable of a danger- 
ous, if not disloyal, act. 

In a confidential letter to General Sheridan, he spoke 
of the violent differences which had grown up between 
the President and Congress, and said : 

I very much fear we are fast approaching the time when the 
President will want to declare Congress itself illegal, uncon- 
stitutional and revolutionary. Commanders in Southern States 



GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION 363 

will have to take great care to see, if a crisis does come, that no 
armed headway can be made against the Union. For this rea- 
son it will be very desirable that Texas should have no reason- 
able excuse for calling out the militia authorized by their legis- 
lature. Indeed, it should be prevented. I write this in strict 
confidence, but to let you know how matters stand in my opinion, 
so that you may square your official acting accordingly. I gave 
orders quietly, two or three weeks since, for the removal of all 
arms in store in the Southern States to Northern arsenals. I wish 
that you would see that those from Baton Rouge and other 
places within your command are being moved rapidly by the 
ordnance officers having the matter in charge. 

Johnson would have removed Grant, had he dared to 
do so. He well knew the danger of antagonizing Grant's 
friends, however, and determined, therefore, to send him 
on a pretended mission to Mexico, and to put Sherman, 
for the time, in his place. He supposed that Grant, be- 
cause of his profound interest in Mexican affairs, would 
accept this mission at once, and would be absent during 
the elections in Maryland, which, for some reason, he 
desired. But the plan did not work out. Grant under- 
stood too well the aims and character of the President. 
He politely declined. He wished to be on the ground, 
to prevent trouble, if possible. 

At a meeting of the cabinet to which he was summoned, 
his detailed instructions were read to him by the Secre- 
tary of State, precisely as though he had not refused 
the honor. He was now thoroughly aroused, and before 
the whole cabinet declared his unwillingness to accept the 
mission. 

The President became very angry. Turning to the 
Attorney-General, he inquired: "Mr. Attorney- General, 
is there any reason why General Grant should not obey my 
orders? Is he in any way ineligible to this position?" 

Grant started to his feet at once, and exclaimed: "I 
can answer that question, Mr. President, without referring 
it to the Attorney-General. I am an American citizen, and 
eligible to any office to which any American is ehgible. I 
am an officer of the army, and bound to obey your mili- 
tary orders. But this is a civil office, a purely diplomatic 



364 LIFE OF GRANT 

duty, and I cannot be compelled to undertake it. Any- 
legal military order you give me I will obey, but this is 
civil, and not military, and I decline the duty. No power 
on earth can compel me to it." 

He said not another word. No one replied, and he left 
the cabinet- chamber. 

The President then telegraphed for General Sherman, 
who was in the mountains of New Mexico. Sherman 
returned at once to Washington, but reported directly to 
General Grant. He found Grant very much moved by 
what he called the plot of President Johnson to get rid 
of him. He again denied the right of the President to 
order him on such a mission, and said he had determined 
to disobey the order and stand the consequences. 

Having the matter thoroughly in hand, General Sher- 
man went to the President, who greeted him with great 
cordiality. " I sent for you, general, to command the 
army in General Grant's absence." He then explained his 
wishes. 

Sherman not only told him that General Grant would 
not go, but said : " You cannot afford to quarrel with 
General Grant, Mr. President. I can be spared much 
better than he." 

With the two greatest soldiers of the army opposed to 
his plan, the President decided to submit gracefully. 
"Certainly," he said; "if you will go, that will answer 
perfectly." 

In this wise did the loyal Sherman repay his chief for 
his consideration and kindness when Stanton and the 
President were perfectly certain he was arranging treason- 
able terms with General Johnston. 



CHAPTER XL 

GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR 

ON August 5, 1867, only one cabinet officer represent- 
ing the Union sentimentof Abraham Lincoln remained 
in office. This was Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War; 
and Johnson determined to make a clean sweep by remov- 
ing him. He addressed to him the following curt note : 

Sir : Public considerations of the highest character constrain 
me to say that your resignation as Secretary of War will be ac- 
cepted. 

To this note Secretary Stanton replied : 

Public considerations of the highest character constrain me 
not to resign the office of Secretary of War before the next 
meeting of Congress. 

General Grant, being informed some days before of the 
President's design to remove Stanton, had written a letter 
remonstrating, wherein he had reviewed the splendid work 
which the Secretary had done for the Union, and spoke of 
his incorruptible and zealous spirit. The general had not 
expected to check Johnson, but had wished to put himself 
on record in opposition. He had been in controversy 
with Stanton over the question of the power of the War 
Department, but he recognized his loyalty and zeal at 
this point. 

After a week's notice, the President issued an order 
suspending Secretary Stanton, and appointing General 
Grant Secretary of War ad interim. 

36s 



366 LIFE OF GRANT 

This placed General Grant in the most delicate and try- 
ing position of his public life. His letter remonstrating 
against Stanton's removal was not made public at the 
time, and neither Stanton nor the radical Republicans 
understood his position. They were determined that he 
should be a politician, and he was equally sure that his 
position was that of a soldier under command of his su- 
perior officer. It was not for him to question the legality 
of President Johnson's removal of Stanton, or of the Ten- 
ure of Office Bill (which had been passed to prevent just 
such removals), but it was his duty to shut out some less 
loyal man. Therefore, he assumed the office of Secretary 
of War, and said nothing, not even to Stanton, and for a 
time the two men misunderstood each other. 

Encouraged by his success, President Johnson passed at 
once to the removal of Generals Sickles and Sheridan, two 
of Grant's most trusted district commanders. He was re- 
solved to stop " reconstruction by military means " so far as 
possible by putting in the places of these loyal and soldierly 
officers men who would less stringently uphold the claims 
of the negro, and more fully recognize local white author- 
ity and local government. He was now thoroughly en- 
raged, and determined to assert himself as against the 
power of General Grant, or the loyal North, or of any one 
whomsoever. 

Within a week he sent a letter to General Grant, 
wherein was inclosed an order removing General Sheridan 
as commander of the Fifth Military District, and substi- 
tuting General George H. Thomas.* He also invited sug- 
gestions from Grant, who immediately replied : 

I am pleased to avail myself of your invitation to urge — ear- 
nesdy urge, urge in the name of a patriotic people — that this 
order should not be insisted upon. It is the will of the country 
that General Sheridan should not be removed from his present 
command. This is a republic, where the will of the people is the 
law of the land. I beg that their voice may be heard. General 
Sheridan has performed his civil duties faithfully and intelligently. 
His removal will only be regarded as an effort to defeat the 

* General Thomas declined on the score of his health, and General Han- 
cock was substituted. 



GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR 367 

laws of Congress. It will be interpreted by the unrecon- 
structed ... as a triumph. It will embolden them to renewed 
opposition to the will of the loyal masses, believing that they 
have the Executive with them. 

General Grant loved Sheridan, and could not sit quietly 
by and see him humiliated. He wished, also, to have 
him close to the Mexican border, ready for an emergency. 

To this letter, which had its weak points, the President 
replied with great boldness and energy, considering his 
long silence : 

I am not aware that the question of retaining General Sheri- 
dan in command of the Fifth Military District has ever been 
submitted to the people themselves for determination. . . . 
General Sheridan has rendered himself exceedingly obnoxious by 
the manner in which he has exercised the powers conferred by 
Congress, and still more so by the resort to authority not granted 
by law. . . . His removal cannot be regarded, therefore, as an 
effort to defeat the laws of Congress. 

He ended by asserting his Presidential prerogatives. 

These letters (though Grant's was private) were made 
public not long after, and were taken to be of enormous 
importance in the South. The Southern press exulted, 
saying, " President Johnson has at last asserted himself," 
and that " in an unguarded hour the inevitable cigar has 
fallen from General Grant's lips, and his real mind has been 
revealed." On the other hand, the extremists of the North 
regarded Grant's letter as an expression of weakness. He 
was accused of having surrendered to the President. He 
had pleaded when he should have commanded. It really 
showed his regard for law and order. 

Wendell Phillips issued a manifesto, in which he said : 

" Grant has at last spoken, and blundered. This was 
our St. Michael, whose resistless sword was to mow down 
the Satan of the fallen host. . . . The general of the 
United States is to-day a weed caught in the Presidential 
maelstrom. Let no Grant man, after this, call Johnson a 
clumsy knave." 

Others said : " Grant has surrendered to the President " ; 
and even his friends admitted that he had greatly disap- 



368 LIFE OF GRANT 

pointed the American people at this point. It was ob- 
served at the time that the Southern press was very much 
emboldened by the President's successful opposition to 
Grant, and the corresponding weakening of the Military 
Department, the very thing Grant had feared. 

Finding this letter (which sprang from his love for 
Sheridan) misunderstood. Grant immediately resumed his 
cigar and his silence, enduring all the misinterpretations 
which were to be borne during the four months in which 
he filled the complicate positions of Secretary of War and 
General of the Army. He did his duty faithfully and well. 
He privately opposed every measure of the President's 
which he regarded as unwise or unwarranted, but retained 
the office to prevent some one more in harmony with 
Johnson from taking his place. He continued to carry out 
the laws of Congress. He repeatedly overruled General 
Hancock, who had succeeded to Sheridan's district, and 
who seemed quite as ready to carry out the will of the 
President as the will of Congress. 

In all the orders sent out to the district commanders, 
General Grant endeavored to maintain a strictly neutral 
position. His orders were : 

Preserve the peace. . . . The military cannot set up to be the 
judge as to which set of election judges have the right to control, 
but must confine their action to putting down hosdle mobs. 

Again he said : 

You are to prevent conflict. Your mission is to preserve peace, 
and not to take sides in political difference. You are to prevent 
mobs from aiding either party. If called upon legally to inter- 
fere, your duty is plain. . . . The military cannot be made use of 
to defeat the execudve of a state in enforcing the laws of a state. 

He kept the duties of his twofold ofifice distinct during 
all this time, and gravely wrote orders as Secretary of 
War Grant to General U. S. Grant, and made reports as 
General Grant to Secretary of War Grant. The two 
offices were on opposite sides of the street, and to play 
the two parts he was obliged frequently to cross and re- 
cross the intervening space. Badeau remarks that he 



GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR 369 

seemed to be a bit more formal when on the cabinet side 
of the avenue, and that he called his aides by their first 
name, or at least spoke to them without the use of their 
title, when at army headquarters. 

It was not without its humorous complications, but it 
was too wearisome and galling for the general to perceive 
much fun in it. He hated the wrangling to which he was 
made party as a member of the cabinet, and he asked to 
be excused from the purely political part of his position. 
He was a soldier discharging his duties, and did not think 
the President had a right to demand that he should be de- 
tained and badgered by questions relating to party policy. 

He waited patiently for Congress to assemble, hoping 
to be then released. 

At last the Senate took the matter in hand. Grant, 
during his entire five months of retention of the office, had 
neither affirmed nor denied the legality of Johnson's posi- 
tion ; but as the Senate began inquiry, he gave the Presi- 
dent to understand that, in case Stanton was sustained, he 
would immediately resign in Stanton's favor. 

To this Johnson verbally replied that he desired Gen- 
eral Grant to retain the office in order to test the legality 
of the act, and that he would be responsible for Grant's 
action, and pay all fines which might be imposed. To this 
Grant replied asking for written instructions concerning 
his duties. 

On January 14, being notified that the Senate had not 
concurred in the removal of Stanton, General Grant made 
good his word, turned the key in the door of the War 
Department, and sent a note to President Johnson, as fol- 
lows : "My functions as Secretary of War ad interim 
ceased at the moment of the receiving of the within 
notice." 

Stanton immediately resumed the office, and sent a very 
brusque note to General Grant, saying that he would like 
to see him. There was nothing in Stanton's words or 
actions to show that he appreciated the delicacy and cour- 
tesy on the part of General Grant during this long and 
troublesome period ; in fact, he renewed his claims to 
command in the field. 



370 LIFE OF GRANT 

President Johnson was thoroughly enraged, and imme- 
diately claimed that General Grant had violated his promise 
to give due warning, and that he had all along acquiesced 
in Stanton's removal, and that he had not properly notified 
the President of his change of opinion in the matter. 
" Therefore," the President concluded, " I am taken by 
surprise by your sudden surrender of the keys of the 
office." 

To this Grant replied : 

The course you would have it understood that I agreed to 
pursue was in violation of law and without orders from you, 
while the course I did pursue, and which I never doubted you 
fully understood, was in accordance with law, and not in disobe- 
dience to any orders of my superiors. And now, Mr. President, 
when my honor as a soldier and integrity as a man have been so 
violently assailed, pardon me for saying that I can but regard 
this whole matter from beginning to end as an attempt to involve 
me in a resistance of law for which you hesitated to assume the 
responsibility, and thus destroy my character before the country. 

This led to a heated public controversy between General 
Grant and President Johnson in respect of a final cabinet 
meeting on a Saturday, wherein Johnson reasserted that he 
had promised to take all the imprisonment and pay all the 
fines that might be imposed upon General Grant for re- 
taining the office in opposition to the congressional will. 
" When he arose to leave the room, I repeated the remark, 
for I wanted to know whether or not he intended to hold 
on to the office, designing to relieve him if it was his pur- 
pose to yield it." 

To this letter General Grant replied, saying that he had 
requested the President to give him instructions in writing 
of what he wished him to do. 

I stated that I had not looked particularly into the Tenure of 
Office Bill, but that what I had stated was a general principle, and 
if I should change my mind in this particular case I would in- 
form him of the fact. 

Subsequently, on reading the Tenure of Office Bill closely, I 
found that I could not, without violation of the law, refuse to 
vacate the office of Secretary of War the moment Mr. Stanton 
was reinstated by the Senate, even though the President should 



GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR 37 1 

order me to retain it, which he never did. Taking this view of 
the matter, and learning on Saturday, the nth instant, that the 
Senate had taken up the subject of Mr. Stanton's suspension, after 
some conversation with General Sherman and some members of 
my staff, I stated that the law left me no discretion as to my 
action, should Mr. Stanton be reinstated, and that I intended to 
inform the President. I went to the President for the sole pur- 
pose of making this decision known, and did so make it known. 
In doing this I fulfilled the promise made in our last preceding 
conversation on the subject. 

The President, however, instead of accepting my view, . . . 
contended that he had suspended Mr. Stanton under authority 
given by the Constitution. ... I stated that the law was bind- 
ing on me, constitutional or not, until set aside by the proper 
tribunal. An hour or more was consumed, each reiterating his 
views on this subject, until, it getting late, the President said he 
would see me again. 

I did not agree to call again on Monday, nor was I sent for 
by the President until the following Monday. With Mr. Stanton 
I had no communication. On Tuesday General Comstock, who 
had carried my official letter, and who saw the President open and 
read my communication, brought back to me from the President 
word that he wanted to see me that day at the cabinet meeting. 

This meeting opened precisely as though he were a 
member of the cabinet (Grant went on to say). It was 
Johnson's intention to ignore all that he had said and 
written in opposition. The conversation was practically a 
review of all that had gone before. 

To Grant's letter President Johnson replied, saying the 
interview had terminated in a distinct understanding that 
if, on reflection, General Grant should conclude it his duty 
to surrender the oflfice upon action in Mr. Stanton's favor, 
he should return the key, in order, if he desired to do so, 
that the President might designate some one to succeed 
Grant. He boldly said : 

It was my purpose to relieve you from the further discharge 
of the duties of Secretary of War, and to appoint some other 
person in that capacity. ... It was then understood that 
there should be a further conference on Monday, by which time 
I supposed you would be prepared to inform me of your final 
decision. You failed, however, to fulfill the engagement. 



372 LIFE OF GRANT 

As a matter of fact, Stanton forestalled Grant by going 
at an early hour to the adjutant-general, and demanding 
the key. When Grant arrived Stanton was in possession of 
the office, and Grant made no further effort in the matter. 

The issue was now straight and clear between Grant 
and Johnson. In plain terms, it was a question of who 
lied in the matter, and with regard to the larger number 
of people in the Union decision was prompt and immedi- 
ate. If there was one thing for which General Grant was 
noted, it was for his truthfulness of speech. With the 
exception of the copperhead press and the more extreme 
papers of the South, the country declared in favor of Gen- 
eral Grant, and he came out of it strengthened rather than 
weakened in the judgment of the unprejudiced. 

This controversy was most important ; it not only vin- 
dicated General Grant in the opinion of the loyal men of 
the nation, but brought him fairly and squarely into poli- 
tics. He could no longer remain a simple soldier doing 
his duty under command of President Johnson. He was 
forced to take sides. He then and there joined the Re- 
publican party. 

There can be no question of his pleasure at being set 
right before the loyal people of the country. He was 
tired of occupying a false position, and his letters made 
his position plain with the Northern people, though it 
drew the line sharply between his friends and his enemies. 
In proportion as his position became defined in the public 
mind, he was accused of departing from his stand at the 
close of the war, and from the gentle policy of Lincoln. 
" The rebels and copperheads opened their batteries on 
him during January all along the line," but this only 
rallied his friends around him the stronger. 

The impeachment trial long threatening now came for- 
ward with a rush. The whole land was turbulent with 
discussion. Originally General Grant had been very much 
opposed to this measure. He was now convinced that 
events justified it. Johnson's removals of Sheridan and 
Stanton, and his perfidious course toward himself, had 
convinced him that the President was a very dangerous 
man, and should be removed. 



GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR 373 

He was called before the committee, and gave his testi- 
mony without anger and without the slightest distortion 
of the facts. He repeated what his own words had been 
as clearly and as simply as ever in his life. He was not 
capable of deceit in matters of this kind. At the same 
time, he was accused of urging senators to vote in favor of 
impeachment. 

He was at first much disappointed at the failure of im- 
peachment proceedings, but, as usual, remained discreetly 
silent. " Afterward his judgment changed, and he came 
to think it better for the country, on the whole, that the 
President should remain in office until the end of his term." 
He was heartily glad when the turmoil of the impeach- 
ment ceased. Johnson was profoundly instructed by the 
close vote, and was saved from utter ruin only by promise 
of a change of policy. 

" The result of the trial was a crushing blow to Stan- 
ton," says Badeau. " It impUed that he should not have 
remained in the cabinet against the will of his chief, and 
it became necessary for him to at once resign." General 
Schofield was made Secretary in his stead. At first Grant 
was opposed to Schofield's acceptance of the position, but, 
after some thought, revised his opinion, and the new Sec- 
retary entered the cabinet in full harmony with the gen- 
eral of the army. This ended the contest over the war 
office, and prevented any violent measures on the part of 
the President toward General Grant and the officers com- 
manding in the districts of the South. 

The lenient policy which Johnson had pursued with re- 
gard to the military districts under the peculiar political 
conditions then existing had led to the formation of secret 
bodies of men in Alabama and Mississippi, whose purpose 
was to intimidate the negro and drive out the Republican 
partizans of these States. Early in the year the first 
notices of the famous Kuklux Klan began to appear. 
In the Richmond " Examiner," in March, appeared an 
article wherein great delight was expressed over the 
coming of the famous raiders to Virginia. The Klan 
haa sprung up in the West, but now it had crossed the 
mountains. 



374 LIFE OF GRANT 

It was too much to expect that the people of the South 
should in one year, or in two years or a score of years, be 
able to eradicate from their midst all the hate and bitter- 
ness and lawlessness engendered by four years of war. 
The Kuklux, and all that it meant, was simply the sur- 
viving spirit of the war carried forward in new forms. 
Opposition to the power of the United States was now 
secret, scattered, nocturnal, and disorganized, but none 
the less effective. 

General Grant understood the meaning of this thing, 
and at once directed the commanders to ferret out and 
crush, if possible, these bands of lawless men ; but he was 
not aided by the Executive as he should have been, and 
the trouble spread. 

Late in the year an article appeared in the Louisville 
" Journal " which was largely quoted in the South, and 
changed the whole tone of discussion. The heading of 
this article denoted its character: "General Grant the 
Father of the Reconstruction Scheme." The cause of the 
article was the publication of a paper (written nearly two 
years before) by General Grant as indorsement of a letter 
by General Sheridan, wherein he said : 

In my opinion, the great number of murders of Union men 
and freedmen in Texas (which are not only unpunished, but un- 
investigated) constitutes practically a state of insurrection ; and 
believing it to be the province and duty of every good government 
to afford protection to the lives, liberties, and property of her 
citizens, I would recommend the declaration of martial law in 
Texas. 

"This letter was dated January 29, 1866, and on the 
6th of February Mr. Thaddeus Stevens reported the 
Reconstruction Bill " ; and this, the Louisville " Journal " 
now informed the South, was largely due to General Grant. 
" General Grant undeniably stands confessed as the father 
of the reconstruction scheme. He belongs to the radicals. 
Their title to him is clear. Let them take him ; they are 
welcome to him. He is a stupendous humbug. There is 
a meanness in his mousing for the Presidency which is 
inexpressibly sickening." 



GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR 375 

In comment upon this, the " Intelligencer " said : 
" The whole country has wondered at the reticence of 
General Grant. It will wonder no longer. The game he 
has been playing is now exposed. He has unwarily 
shown his hand. We look to the National Democracy of 
the North and West, and the white race inhabiting every 
section of the United States untainted with negro radical- 
ism, to accomplish the overthrow, not only of General 
Grant, but every oth'ir candidate who does not stand upon 
the platform on whicn is inscribed : * This is a white man's 
governmen*" ^nd must be maintained.' " 



CHAPTER XLl 

GRANT SAVES THE UNION PakTi 

TWO days after the acquittal of President Johnson, 
the Republican party assembled in convention in 
Chicago to nominate their candidates for the next cam- 
paign. Six hundred and fifty delegates, representing 
every State in the Union, including the unreconstructed 
States of the South, presented their credentials and were 
accepted. Only one name was seriously mentioned for 
first place on the ticket, and that was General Grant's. 
His fame was overshadowing. There were five candidates 
for the second place. 

The city was tremendously excited, and vast crowds of 
people poured in from all the surrounding country with 
something of the same fervor of interest that had been ex- 
hibited in the convention which nominated Abraham Lin- 
coln for the first time. Indeed, these men considered that 
they were again met to save the nation and all they had 
fought to secure. 

It was, of course, a convention dominated by the mili- 
tary spirit. Nearly all of the great commanders of the 
Northern army were there, enthusiastic for their chief. 
The hall, decorated for the purpose of expressing the pa- 
triotic zeal of the delegates, made lavish use of the red, 
white, and blue of the Union flag, and every allusion to 
the war and its successes gave rise to the most fervid ap- 
plause. The members could hardly wait until the ordi- 
nary formalities were over, so eager were they to honor 

Grant. 

376 



GRANT SAVES THE UNION PARTY 377 

At length the point was reached where nominations 
were in order, and General Logan, rising, said : 

" Then, sir, in the name of the loyal citizens and soldiers 
and sailors of this great republic, in the name of loyalty, 
liberty, humanity, and justice, I nominate as candidate for 
the Chief Magistracy of this nation Ulysses S. Grant." 

This speech, made, with propriety, by the man who had 
introduced Colonel Grant to his first regiment, aroused 
the greatest enthusiasm. The audience rose with tumul- 
tuous cheers for Grant. No other name was heard. So 
great and so instantaneous was the emotional response that 
a delegate from South Carolina, as soon as he could be 
heard, moved that the vote be taken by acclamation. 
" No, no!" was the reply. The States wanted an oppor- 
tunity to speak, and the roll was called. 

Alabama gave eighteen votes for Grant. California 
shouted: "We come here six thousand miles to cast our 
votes for General Grant." Colorado said: "The Rocky 
Mountains of Colorado bring General Grant all they have 
— six votes. Florida, " the land of flowers," gave six, and 
Georgia, through Governor Brown, cast her eighteen votes 
for General Grant, " heartily desiring to speed the restora- 
tion of the Union, harmony and peace and good govern- 
ment." Kansas, the " State of John Brown," gave him 
six votes. Louisiana said : " We propose to fight it out 
on that line, if it takes all summer." Ohio, which had the 
honor of being the mother of the great leader, cast " forty- 
two votes for her illustrious son." Virginia, " rising from 
the grave that General Grant dug for her at Appomattox 
in 1865," came with twenty votes to enlist under his ban- 
ner. " We propose next autumn ' to move on the enemy's 
works,' " its spokesman concluded. And so the roll went 
on, every State presenting all she had with boundless good 
will; and then the president announced the result: 

" Gentlemen of the convention, the roll is completed. 
You have six hundred and fifty votes, and you have given 
six hundred and fifty votes for Ulysses S. Grant." 

The audience again arose in a transport of harmonious 
enthusiasm, and cheered themselves hoarse, while the new 
drop-curtain in the rear of the stage was uncovered, pre- 



378 LIFE OF GRANT 

senting a fine portrait of the general, supported by the 
Goddess of Liberty, with the motto above : " Match him ! " 

As soon as the convention reached a measure of quiet, 
the election of Vice-President went forward, and the Hon. 
Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
was selected to be the second on the ticket. 

Old Jesse Grant, the father of the future President, was 
on the platform, overwhelmed by the enthusiasm for his 
son. He had addressed the convention of soldiers and 
sailors the evening before. In his speech he asked : " What 
have I done, that I should be called upon by the braves of 
the nation to speak to them? " Some one in the audience 
had called out: "You had a son; that is enough." This 
allusion had so filled his eyes with tears of pride and joy 
that he could not go on, but had retired amid the cheers 
of the convention. Now, as he sat before the national 
convention, his tongue, commonly so ready, failed him 
utterly. 

With regard to the doctrine upon which they were to 
make their fight, the Republican party said : " First, the 
regulation of the suffrage in all the loyal States belongs to 
the States themselves ; second, in the States that attempted 
to secede, the general government must give the suffrage 
to all loyal men, whether they had it under State laws or 
not, on the ground that ' every consideration of public 
safety, of gratitude, and of justice demands that they should 
have it.' " That is to say, broadly speaking, the Northern 
States could regulate their suffrage for themselves, but that 
the Southern States could not be trusted to deal justly 
with the negro, and that suffrage should there be deter- 
mined by the power of the general government. 

The situation which they had to face was this : Three 
years had passed away since the close of the war, and 
though every measure had looked to the restoration of the 
Union, the Union was not restored. The Southern States 
were still outside the halls of Congress ; they had no rep- 
resentation and no voice in the making of laws. This, 
however disappointing at the time, was a perfectly natural 
situation. War is not so easily forgotten. Racial antip- 
athies are not so quickly legislated out of existence. 



GRANT SAVES THE UNION PARTY 379 

Society is an organism, history the story of its develop- 
ment. In the course of the growth of a nation a year is 
but an hour. Little could be expected in so short a time. 

As General Grant had said in Atlanta, it was natural 
that friction should continue after the war. It was natural 
that the hotheads, the extremists, the prejudiced at the 
North as well as in the South, should claim the larger share 
of public attention. It was natural that every vicious 
editorial written in the South should be copied in the 
Northern press, and that every hateful speech in the North 
should be reported in the South. It was natural that 
politicians should make use of all sectionalism to further 
their own ends. 

The time needed a strong man, a man about whose 
course there could be no question. The South needed a 
man like Grant, whose words were few and to be depended 
upon. His nomination gave tranquillity to both sections 
at once. The tone of the Southern papers almost instantly 
changed. While continuing to criticize him, their words 
had little of the fierce energy with which they had urged 
on and sustained the vacillating and unwise policy of 
President Johnson. Nevertheless the " solid South " lined 
itself up against the solid North. The war of words began. 

Meanwhile the nominee was quietly going about his 
duties as general of the army. But a few days later, the 
Republicans of the city arranged an impromptu serenade, 
and about a thousand people gathered before his house, 
calling for " Grant! Grant! General Grant! " 

When the general appeared, Governor Bout well made a 
brief congratulatory address, alluding briefly to the gen- 
eral's military career. 

The general appeared very much embarrassed when it 
came his turn to speak, but he made a very considerable 
address, for him. He ended by saying: " All I can say is 
that, to whatever position I am called by your will, I will 
endeavor to discharge its duties with fidelity and honesty 
of purpose. Of my rectitude in the performance of pub- 
lic duties you must judge for yourselves from my record, 
which is open to you." 

A few days later the committee of the National Repub- 



38o LIFE OF GRANT 

lican Convention called upon their candidate at his house, 
and formally presented a report of the proceedings in 
Chicago. To them he replied, expressing his gratitude 
for the confidence they had placed in him, and thanking 
them for the unanimity of their action : 

If chosen to fill the high office for which you have selected 
me, I will give to its duties the same energy, the same spirit, and 
the same will that I have given to the performance of all duties 
which have devolved upon me heretofore. Whether I shall be 
able to perform these duties to your entire satisfaction time will 
determine. You have truly said, in the course of your address, 
that I shall have no policy of my own to enforce against the 
will of the people. 

In his letter of acceptance, which soon followed, he 
indorsed the proceedings of the convention, which seemed 
to him to have been marked with wisdom, moderation, 
and patriotism. He said it was impossible, however, or at 
least eminently improper, to lay down a policy to be ad- 
hered to, right or wrong, through an administration of 
four years. 

New political issues not foreseen are constantly arising, and 
the views of the public on them are constantly changing, and a 
purely administrative officer should always be left free to execute 
the will of the people. 

After finishing his letter, which was short and simple, 
he laid down his pen. After a moment's thought of the 
torn and tortured South, he took up the pen again, and 
added four significant words: " Let us have peace." 

These words were at once taken up and echoed from 
one end of the country to the other. They were called 
" treacherous words of peace " by his enemies, but for the 
most part they expressed the great longing which the 
people had for tranquillity and deliverance from war and 
the vengeance which follows war. 

Interest in his daily doings became greater than ever 
before, and reporters, friendly and unfriendly, were con- 
stantly at his door. His home was described at this time 
as an " agreeable one, plainly showing the nature and 



GRANT SAVES THE UNION PARTY 38 1 

tastes of the occupant. Tall walnut bookcases surround 
three sides of the library. Everything relating to the 
business of war is there, with histories in abundance. On 
the mantel is a cigar-stand, a bronzed statue of a drum- 
mer, and another of a bugler. Engravings of Washing- 
ton, Lincoln, Sherman, and Sheridan are on the walls. 
Easy-chairs and lounges are placed carelessly about the 
room, and the library is, without doubt, the most cheerful 
and inviting apartment in the house. An oil-painting of 
Sheridan and one of McPherson are prominently hung in 
the parlors, and a marble bust and an engraving of Presi- 
dent Lincoln are also conspicuous." 

Early in July the Democrats, assembling in New York 
City, nominated Horatio Seymour of New York for 
President, and General Frank P. Blair of Missouri for Vice- 
President. The convention and its platform were almost 
as completely Southern in sentiment as the Chicago con- 
vention had been Union in sentiment. As the conspicuous 
figures at Chicago had been Logan and Sickles, it was 
natural and appropriate that General Wade Hampton, 
General N. B. Forest, and General Thomas L. Price should 
be prominent in New York ; and, naturally, General John 
A. McClernand was there to shake hands with Hampton 
over plans to defeat Grant. The Democratic party had 
no hope of success in the future without the aid of the 
South, and every concession that could be safely made to 
them appeared in the platform. The convention declared 
against negro suffrage as a basis of reconstruction, but 
admitted that the question of slavery and the question of 
secession were settled for all time. 

The platform was, in fact, a mixture of good and bad, 
Hke the Republican platform. Neither party had a mo- 
nopoly of all the virtues. It had its appeal, this Democratic 
pronunciamento, and it had its short-sighted and violent 
prejudices. The convention reflected as in a mirror the 
venomous hatred of the " copperhead Democracy " of the 
North for the " black Republican " party. It was notable 
that the Northern men were the most bitter and outspoken. 
Johnson's policy was in a sense supported, but Johnson 
himself ceased to be a factor. He was a poUtical outcast ; 



382 LIFE OF GRANT 

he had betrayed his own party, and failed to win the favor 
of the other. The ticket was foredoomed to failure at the 
start. 

As the contest went on it became exceedingly acrid. 
Nothing was too mean to be said. Grant was called the 
" drunken tanner," the " butcher," and the " man on horse- 
back." According to the enlightened views of opposing 
editors, the contest narrowed down to a choice between a 
drunkard and a lunatic, and the nation was again about 
to be lost. 

Many of the Democratic papers in the North had per- 
sistently upheld Grant so long as they supposed him to be 
still Democratic in feeling and closely in union with John- 
son. His nomination, however, by the Republican con- 
vention, by all the laws of political warfare, made every 
Democrat the devoted and irresponsible assailant of the 
head of the opposing ticket. Grant was appalled at the 
storm which followed. 

All over the nation, scavengers, unclean of mind and 
purchasable of conscience, delved deep among the saloon- 
keepers and pot-houses of the cities wherein he had lived, 
and pretended to bring to light stories of his drunkenness 
and profligacy. The city of St. Louis furnished the larger 
share of these stories ; but opposition politicians in Cin- 
cinnati, New York, Galena, Sacket's Harbor, San Fran- 
cisco, and Portland added their contribution to the grow- 
ing collection. His life, according to these reports, had 
been monstrous in its degrading acts. He was accused of 
associating with the lowest and most drunken reprobates 
in St. Louis and in Detroit. An article written by " An 
Officer of the United States Army " appeared in a maga- 
zine published in New York, which restated with brutal 
plainness the cause of his return from California in 1854. 
The Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati papers gave 
ready assistance in spreading these tales abroad over the 
land, and one journal went so far as to detail a man to 
follow General Grant about and secure damaging evidence 
against him. Through the work of this man, every story 
by every political jackal and road-house loafer was scraped 
from the mire and given to the world, gleefully, and 



GRANT SAVES THE UNION PARTY 383 

without a word in deprecation or in question of its truth- 
fulness. 

It was to be inferred that the Confederate brigadiers 
would make unexpectedly mild speeches, and that all 
the bitter invectives should be left to their copperhead 
brethren in the North. This was the case. Hampton, 
Forest, Gordon, Lee, left vitriolic vituperation to the 
leaders of the North, who improved the opportunity to 
the full. All was of little avail, however. The current 
of the time set hard at the keel, the winds of fortune 
filled the sails of the Republican craft, and it swept for- 
ward in irresistible majesty. 

Grant himself took no part in the campaign. As he 
had not sought the office, so now he declined to work for 
it. His party managers were much troubled by his course. 
Nearly all his friends thought it unwise, and those who 
were intimate enough to speak to him advised against it. 
The entire party, they said, needed his advice. It was a 
momentous struggle, and he should take the most active 
part in it, being its leader in fact as well as in name. 

He replied : " I do not care to give advice. If the peo- 
ple wish to make me President they will do so." He set 
out for his little home in Galena, leaving directions that no 
letters should be forwarded to him (at least, such as were 
political in character), and there spent the intervening 
weeks in comfort and peace. He did not return East 
until November. In all this period only one or two of 
the political people of consequence ventured to write to 
him. Sherman, too, had determined to keep out of poli- 
tics, and so uttered no word in favor of his friend and 
chief. His silence provoked criticism from others, but 
it did not trouble Grant; he considered Sherman's posi- 
tion quite right ; he even defended it. He attended no 
political meetings, and went about the country very little. 
His mornings were passed in reading and answering let- 
ters, or giving Badeau directions in reply to letters. He 
read the newspapers closely, and talked freely concerning 
the election. With intimate friends he went over the map 
of the United States, saying quietly, but with perfect cer- 
tainty in his voice: " We shall carry this State, and that 



384 LIFE OF GRANT 

State, and that State." He became profoundly convinced 
that he was to be elected. He never questioned it. 

In the afternoon he drove or walked about the streets 
of the little town like any other citizen, sat down with his 
friend Rowley, or McClellan, or Chetlain, and talked over 
neighborhood affairs as well as national affairs. He took 
tea with the families of his old neighbors in the simple, 
homely. Western fashion. Many transient visitors called 
and were entertained at his house. There was no cere- 
mony in anything he did. It was a wonderful thing 
to his neighbors — almost unrealizable — to think of him 
quietly going about the streets of this little Western town, 
bearing such high honors, and being the subject of such 
mighty controversy in the nation. 

On the day of election he accompanied his neighbors to 
the polls, and cast his ballot for the entire Republican 
ticket except for President. 

" At about ten o'clock in the evening he went to Wash- 
burne's house, not far from his own. Arrangements had 
been made to receive the news, and there were in the 
room a dozen citizens of Galena, and one or two corre- 
spondents. Every man present seemed more excited than 
Grant. He did not pretend to indifference, but I often 
saw him show more interest over a game of cards than in 
his election that night," writes Badeau. 

At about two o'clock it was considered certain that the 
Republicans had carried the day, and, standing on his 
doorstep, General Grant addressed a little company of his 
friends and fellow-citizens. He was perfectly calm and 
unaffected in manner, but he used one expression which 
those listening did not soon forget: "The responsibilities 
of the position I feel, but accept them without fear." 



CHAPTER XLII 

GENERAL GRANT LAYS DOWN THE SWORD 

THE President elect did not resign his commission as 
chief of the army until he took the oath of office as 
Chief Executive. He considered that the act of taking 
the oath as President annulled his commission as general. 
He was still the head of the army by the express terms of 
the Constitution. 

Inauguration day was cold and cloudy, but the streets 
were almost as crowded as upon the day of the grand re- 
view four years before. The feeling among the spectators 
gathered from all parts of the United States was one of 
joy and hope. They firmly believed the nation had been 
a second time saved by General Grant. By mid-forenoon 
the sky began to clear, and those who were a bit fanciful 
said one to the other: " It is going to clear; it will be a 
fine day yet. Just so will it be with Grant's administra- 
tion. The general will carry us forward into the sunlight 
of peace and prosperity." 

At eleven o'clock, exactly as the general stepped out 
upon the porch, the sun suddenly broke forth, flooding the 
Presidential party with warm light, which symbolized the 
vivid rays of fame which now beat hard upon the " Little 
Man of Destiny." 

He entered his own carnage, an ordinary park phaeton, 
in company with General Rawlins. He had declined to 
be accompanied by Andrew Johnson, who remained be- 
hind signing papers until twelve o'clock. Speaker Colfax, 
with several members of Grant's staff, filled the second 
carriage. The band of the Fifth Cavalry struck up " Hail 
to the Chief," the mounted column escort wheeled into 

3S5 



,^86 LIFE OF GRANT 

column, and upon the signal of a cannon-shot the proces- 
sion moved up the avenue toward the Capitol. 

The coming President was unimposing, as usual. He 
wore a suit of plain dark clothes. His expression was 
grave and his mood self-contained. The public was again 
at fault. Many of the sight-seers had expected to see him 
pass in full uniform, in a carriage drawn by six horses, 
followed by his staff. They had expected a great histori- 
cal moment when the general of the army would lay down 
his sword to become the President. Again General Grant 
neglected his opportunity. 

On the eastern side of the Capitol a broad platform had 
been erected for the inauguration ceremonies, and before 
it a vast throng had waited for hours the coming of the 
President elect. At last the Supreme Court, filing out 
with preternatural dignity, led the way for General Grant, 
who walked forward to the little table at the center of the 
platform. Behind him came Mr. Colfax and as many of 
the senators as could find room. 

As soon as the military organization drawn up below in 
front of the platform obtained a sight of their general, they 
raised a cheer, which was caught up and carried forward 
by the waiting populace until lost in distance. 

At this moment, standing at the topmost dizzy pinnacle 
of national fame, a point to which he had climbed by vir- 
tue of his own honesty, persistency, and courage, Ulysses 
Grant betrayed no embarrassment and little emotion. No 
twitching muscle or flush of blood externalized whatever 
he may have felt. With one foot a little advanced, and 
head slightly bowed, he waited until Salmon P. Chase, 
once his rival, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
stepped forward and held out a Bible. On this General 
Grant laid his right hand reverently. 

The chief justice then read the solemn words of the 
official oath, and General Grant repeated them : " I do 
solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of 
President of the United States, and will, to the best of my 
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of 
the United States." 

The chief justice slightly raised his hand. The general 




U. S. Grant ni)t long before liis first election as President, age 46 years. 




IIS. (Irfuit soon alter his tirst inauiiuration as President, ugc 47 year^. 



GENERAL GRANT LAYS DOWN THE SWORD 387 

bent his head, lightly touching the Bible with his lips. 
Ulysses S. Grant had ceased to be general of the army, 
and had become the Chief Executive of the nation. The 
boom of the cannon announced for miles around the tri- 
umphant tidings that he who had saved the nation in 
time of war had sworn now to preserve it in peace. 

He began his inaugural address by saying that he 
would express his views to Congress, and urge them ac- 
cording to his judgment, and would use the constitutional 
privilege of veto to defeat measures which he opposed, but 
that all laws would be faithfully executed, whether they 
met his approval or not. " I shall have a policy to rec- 
ommend," he said, "but none to enforce against the will 
of the people." He knew no method to secure the repeal 
of bad laws so effective as their stringent execution. The 
country, just having emerged from a great civil war, nat- 
urally had questions to meet which other administrations 
had not dealt with, and it was desirable to approach these 
questions calmly, without hatred or sectional prejudice, 
striving always for the greatest good to the greatest 
number. 

He touched also upon the heavy debt which had been 
contracted, and suggested that every dollar of the govern- 
ment's indebtedness should be paid in gold unless other- 
wise stipulated. How the public debt was to be paid, or 
specie payments resumed, was not so important as that a 
plan should be adopted. A united determination to do 
was worth more than divided counsels upon how to do it. 

He promised to do his best to appoint to office those 
who would execute all laws in good faith, and collect and 
disburse all revenues honestly. 

With regard to his foreign policy, he promised to deal 
with nations as equitable law requires individuals to deal 
with each other, and to protect all law-abiding citizens, 
whether native or of foreign birth, wherever their rights 
were jeopardized and the stars and stripes floated. 

The proper treatment of the Indian, he said, was one 
deserving of careful study. " I will favor any course to- 
ward them which tends to their civilization and ultimate 
citizenship." 



388 LIFE OF GRANT 

With regard to sufTrage, it seemed to him very desirable 
that the question should be settled at once, and he enter- 
tained the hope and expressed the desire to see the ratifi- 
cation of the Fifteenth Amendment. In conclusion, he 
said : 

" I would ask patient forbearance one toward another 
throughout the land, and a determined effort on the part 
of every citizen toward cementing a happy union, and I 
ask the prayers of the nation to Almighty God in behalf 
of this consummation." 

The President commenced reading his address in a voice 
of ordinary conversational key, but soon allowed it to 
drop so low as to be unheard even upon the platform. 
During the whole of the reading, Mrs. Grant, her daugh- 
ter, and several ladies sat cramped up behind the judges 
of the Supreme Court. At last the little daughter Nellie, 
becoming tired of her position, made her way to the 
President's side, and stood beside him for several minutes 
while he read. At length, a chair being given her, she 
took a seat just behind the general. 

The crowd, divining this to be his daughter, was pro- 
foundly moved by the contrast of the delicate little girl 
standing beside the stern commander of the Wilderness 
while he proclaimed in severe Anglo-Saxon speech the 
policy by which he would be guided during his adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the United States. 

After the delivery of the speech. President Grant and 
Vice-President Colfax returned to the White House, and 
were received by Secretary Schofield, General Grant's 
staff, and a few friends. In answer to an inquiry, the 
President said he would not hold a reception. He was 
very grave, very reticent even with his intimate friends. 
In that way alone he expressed the deep emotion he felt. 
The throngs without would not accept this word as final, 
and remained for hours waiting about the gates; but at 
last they came to understand that President Grant wished 
to become President as simply as possible. 

In the evening a grand inauguration reception and ball 
was held in the north wing of the White House. Every 
military, naval, and political man of note was present. 



GENERAL GRANT LAYS DOWN THE SWORD 389 

There was no exclusiveness ; it was a national gathering. 
It represented all classes of society, all sections of the 
Union, and almost ev^ery race on the face of the earth. 
Whether it added to the happiness of General Grant is 
doubtful. Without question it was the supreme moment 
in the life of his loyal wife. 

The President's address excited the most intense ex- 
citement. It was at once seized upon and twisted hard to 
wring some sinister meaning from it. Mainly it was ap- 
proved. It was considered to be like him, firm, but gentle, 
sincere, and perfectly lucid. Only one paper in the North 
considered it " empty and self-confident, and at the same 
time servile." To others it read " like the bulletin of a 
great general." In the South it was well received. 
Naturally the Southern editors could not be expected to 
cry out in admiration, but they acknowledged that the 
document " manifested a most catholic and winning spirit 
toward the whole country"; nor did they fail to remark 
the " absence of the familiar vocabulary of the radical 
party." Every one knew exactly what the President 
meant ; he had intended to express, not to conceal, his 
ideas. 

For just one week this calm and beautiful period of 
almost universal approbation lasted, and then the pickets 
of the opposition began firing again. One by one, the 
regiments behind took it up, and before three months had 
passed the roar of assault was again sounding throughout 
the entire Democratic army. 

There had been a most intense curiosity concerning his 
cabinet. It could not be anticipated, for he had taken no 
one into his confidence, not even Mrs. Grant. Rawlins 
was almost heartbroken over this silence on the part of 
his chief, for he had expected to be appointed Secretary 
of War. He became ill in his anxiety, and Washburne of 
Illinois, who wished to be Secretary of the Treasury, but 
to whom Grant uttered no word of promise during this 
time, also became much depressed. Nothing but the 
faintest rumors of the men Grant had selected were ob- 
tainable up to the very moment of his message to the 
Senate. 



390 LIFE OF GRANT 

Most of the nominations were a surprise. For Secretary 
of State he had named his friend Washburne of Illinois. 
For Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. A. T. Stewart, the 
great merchant of New York City. It was expected that 
Washburne would be nominated for some office, but the 
selection of Stewart was wholly unanticipated. He had 
been chosen because it seemed to Grant that a successful 
man of business ought to be successful in taking care of 
the financial affairs of the nation. For Secretary of the 
Navy he sent in the name of Mr. A. E, Borie, a wealthy 
merchant of Philadelphia, who was more completely sur- 
prised than anybody else in the nation. He was not an 
intimate friend, but he was a man of high character, and 
had been a warm supporter of the Northern cause. Ex- 
Governor J. D. Cox of Ohio as Secretary of the Interior, 
the Hon. H. A. Creswell of Maryland as Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, and the Hon. E. Rockwood Hoar as Attorney-Gen- 
eral, completed the list. General John M. Schofield, who 
was serving at the time as Secretary of War ad interim, 
was retained in that position for a week, with the under- 
standing that John A. Rawlins was to take his place. 
Schofield had proved himself his friend in his position, 
when he might have been an enemy, and in recognition of 
this he was made the first Secretary of War. 

As a matter of fact, the whole cabinet in less than a 
week was disintegrated. Mr. Stewart, according to an 
old clause of the Constitution, was found to be ineligible 
unless he surrendered his private business. Washburne, 
who had asked to be appointed Secretary of the Treasury, 
had been given his second choice, which was to be minis- 
ter to France, with the further compliment of being Sec- 
retary of State for a week. He wished to be counted in 
historically with the Grant cabinet, and argued that to 
hold the position of Secretary of State even for a week 
would give him greater consideration abroad. This, out 
of consideration for Washburne's loyal friendship in the 
past, the President agreed to, although it brought him 
much trouble and criticism. 

At the end of the week the position was offered to 
James F. Wilson of Iowa, who declined it because it was 



GENERAL GRANT LAYS DOWN THE SWORD 39I 

too expensive. Grant then sent General Babcock to urge 
ex-Governor Hamilton Fish to accept it and save the ad- 
ministration from further embarrassment. This he did, 
after some hesitation. George S. Boutwell was hurriedly- 
selected to fill Stewart's place in the Treasury; but as he 
and the Attorney- General were both from Massachusetts, 
the critics began to grumble. 

The whole matter of getting the cabinet together was 
very annoying and embarrassing, and the trouble arose 
from General Grant's military habit of secrecy, from his 
idea of command, and also from his slight acquaintance 
among men of large affairs. His life in the army and in 
the West had not brought him in contact with many men 
of national reputation. He knew soldiers ; he did not 
know statesmen. As for politicians, he disliked and dis- 
trusted them, and in his attempt to establish a cabinet 
without scheming politicians he became entangled in worse 
mistakes. 

With his cabinet at last in position, he began his work. 
The administration was military at the start ; there was no 
question about that ; the times were military. Generals 
were the President's secretaries, and colonels were his 
messengers ; the White House became his headquarters. 
He went further: he regarded even his cabinet ministers 
as staff-officers, who should be his personal friends, ready 
to carry out, with him, the orders of the people. All of 
this, of course, provoked immediate criticism, and certain 
senators objected strongly to receiving messages at the 
hands of an officer in the regular army, who should be 
attending to his military duties. They forgot that, as 
constitutional head of the army and navy, the President 
had a right to command his subordinates to serve him. 

Among the first acts of his new office was to send in 
nominations for promotions in the army. Just as in days 
before, when, having moved up a notch himself, he had 
lifted others, so now he carried Sherman, Sheridan, Scho- 
field, and Rawlins with him. Sherman was made general, 
and Sheridan became lieutenant-general in Sherman's 
stead. Schofield, leaving the War Department to Raw- 
lins, became major-general in Sheridan's stead, while 



392 LIFE OF GRANT 

C. C. Auger (one of Grant's old classmates), who had long 
been in command in Washington, slipped into Schofield's 
vacant room. Another early order, and a very significant 
one, restored Sheridan to his command at New Orleans, 
from which he had been removed by Johnson. General 
Terry was sent to command Georgia, and General J. J. 
Reynolds (the professor who recommended Captain Grant 
for county engineer in St. Louis) was sent to command in 
Texas, while General Frank P. Blair was relieved of com- 
mand on the coast. The radical North felt a thrill of jubi- 
lation at the news of Sheridan's reinstatement. Andrew 
Johnson and all that he represented had passed away. 

Among his earliest civil acts was the nomination of 
General James Longstreet to be surveyor of the port of 
New Orleans. This did not please the radicals so well as 
Blair's removal, but it was, in point of fact, an excellent 
thing to do. It was not only the recognition of a great 
and honorable soldier, but it tended to show that President 
Grant was not to be the ruler of one section of the coun- 
try, but of every State in the Union. In the South Gen- 
eral Longstreet was quite generally abused for accepting 
the position at the hands of his late adversary ; but the 
broad-minded citizens everywhere took it to mean friend- 
ship and good will and confidence on the part of the Presi- 
dent. The appointment of Sheridan was taken to mean 
that if States were to be in the Union, they must conform 
to its laws, and that if they conformed to its laws they 
would not be disturbed. 

The wind of politics is fickle. Not two months had 
elapsed before certain of the Republican journals were 
sharply criticizing the administration. They accused each 
other of "trying to run Grant" after he was elected. 
Some of them claimed that Washburne, Rawlins, the Dents, 
and the Caseys had been let in a private way before the 
public door to the feast had been opened ; that Washburne 
liad staggered off with the piece de resistance; that the 
Dents and Caseys had secured the pates and the pastries ; 
while Russell Jones and a few other Galenaites had moved 
upon the charlotte russes, and little but crust was left for 
the after-comers. 



GENERAL GRANT LAYS DOWN THE SWORD 393 

Mr. Washburne was accused of naming forty-eight for- 
eign appointees on the strength of a mere personal com- 
pHment. As the names of other appointees began to go to 
the pubhc press the charges of nepotism were seriously- 
made. The President was accused of appointing all his 
brothers-in-law to office. The opposition papers called 
attention to this fact, with facetious remarks concerning 
the " plague of Dents." " As a matter of fact he has ap- 
pointed very few of his own people to office," said the 
friendly journals. It might be said with greater justice 
that he has appointed his wife's people to office." The 
Dents were said to be " worse than the Todds in the Lin- 
coln administration." 

The President was accused of making friendship the test 
of fitness for office (and there was truth in that), and of 
giving offices to men who had made presents to him, which 
was not so true. He gave the appointments to men be- 
cause they were friends, and not because they gave gifts. 
He was incapable of supposing his friends to be selfish. 
The tests which he applied to a man were not always 
sufficiently searching. If a man was his friend, and could 
do some one thing well, he was apt to think that he could 
do greater things equally well. Friendship was one of the 
strongest forces in Grant's character, and now that he had 
the power to reward those who had been true to him in 
his adversitv, he had the will to do so. He had the will 
to be loyal in his prosperity. This may not have been 
the attitude of the ideal statesman, but it was very human. 

His election to office was due to great ability and to a 
great national uprising. He had no social claims whatever. 
He came of the common people, and his civil life had been 
among men of small concerns. He, rising to a peak from 
these low levels, moved by some elemental force beneath, 
carried with him his friends and neighbors, among them 
men like Rawlins and Webster and Sheridan and McPher- 
son, and scores of civilians. They were not necessary to 
him, but he was necessary to them, although he would 
have been the last to say so. Every man who had stood 
by him when he was in shadow had an indisputable claim 
upon him now that he was in sunlight, and he turned 



594 LIFE OF GRANT 

naturally to them in dispensing the rewards of office. He 
lifted hundreds from obscurity and poverty to well-paid 
official positions. Offices must go to some one, and why 
not to honest and faithful friends of our adversity? On 
the basis of this argument, he made Charles Ford collector 
at St. Louis, he sent Russell Jones to Belgium and Gen- 
eral Chetlain to Brussels, and made editor Houghton con- 
sul to Lahaine in the Sandwich Islands. He listened to 
the voices of those whom he had known and respected, 
and granted their requests. This was not criminal in 
itself, but it turned out badly in some cases, and gave 
rise to scandal. Some of these appointments came about 
directly ; most of them were made by congressmen and 
senators. He did not like to have his friends apply for 
office, but politicians thought to ingratiate themselves by 
advocating those who stood near him. His friendships 
were traded upon shamelessly, that must be admitted. 

He was a most loyal friend, but he was also a good 
hater. He often held out amazingly, almost criminally, in 
favor of an accused friend ; but when he knew a man had 
played him false, he became granite and iron. Treachery 
he never forgave. An open enemy he honored ; duplicity 
he abhorred. In the distribution of favors during his term 
of power, he never forgot a friend, and he seldom forgave 
a man who had deliberately deceived or betrayed him. It 
was on this principle that he made General Longstreet 
surveyor of the port at New Orleans, and relieved General 
Frank P. Blair of command. 

It was a year of most desperate office-seeking. The 
close of the war had let loose a flood of men who had lost 
their grip on civil life, and who found it impossible to re- 
turn to the ordinary humdrum ways of getting a living. 
These men now swarmed around the hotels of Washington, 
and invaded the White House like the plague of locusts. 
Spoliation of public funds seemed to have become suddenly 
the chief ambition of thousands. 

In a letter to his sister Mary, before the end of March, 
the President said : 

I scarcely get one moment alone. Office-seeking is getting 
to be one of the industries of the age. It gives me no peace. 



GENERAL GRANT LAYS DOWN THE SWORD 395 

These political beggars not only besieged him, but they 
alighted upon Jesse Grant and his wife, and upon every 
second and third cousin. Grant had been very careful of 
using his influence while general of the army, even to aid 
his most intimate friends. He did not like to have men 
appeal to him for office, and this was generally known ; 
therefore until he became President he had not become 
fully aware of th'p office-seeking horde. His principal 
task for the first year was the bad task of turning back 
the lean and hungry kine who wished to feed at public 
expense. 

His critics had said : " Grant is not fit to govern, for he 
has no idea of a republican form of government." But in 
this lay a gross exaggeration. It is true his mind was es- 
sentially military, and his government, so far as the ex- 
ecutive department was concerned, was personal and 
absolute. He made it evident at the start that he was in 
very fact the head of the executive, but he was careful to 
maintain the distinction between the legislative, judicial, 
and executive departments. He was ready to consider 
the acts of Congress binding upon the Executive as well 
as upon the nation, for he regarded congressional enact- 
ment as the direct expression of the will of the majority. 
If he interposed a veto, it was to show his personal views. 
If the measure passed over his head, it became law, and 
he executed it as promptly as though he had himself 
formulated it. 

He was never anxious to escape responsibility, and did 
not expect the country to hold his cabinet responsible for 
his personal opinions. Conversely, he did not care to have 
dissensions within his official family. The cabinet was 
not a place for a dissenter. He would not endure a man 
who assumed to dictate, and, above all, he held in detesta- 
tion a man who played two parts. These considerations 
will explain much of the shame and most of the weakness 
of his cabinet. He chose the members as friends and 
subordinates rather than as statesmen and advisers. 



CHAPTER XLin 

GRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

FROM the very moment of General Grant's acceptance 
of the oath of office, it became evident that another 
great commoner had entered the Presidential Mansion. 
Everything he did was marked with the same simplicity 
and lack of display which surprised and pleased the peo- 
ple when he was chief of the army. He continued to 
come and go about the streets alone and unattended, 
looking just the same, acting quite the same, as when 
general-in-chief at City Point, with, however, something 
intangible added to his mien to speak subtly of the great 
experiences he had been through and the great command 
he had exercised. He was often to be met driving his 
horse along Pennsylvania Avenue, or in the early morning 
taking a brisk walk to Georgetown and back. 

Stories abound with regard to his simplicity and sin- 
cerity of manner. While it is true that he accepted the 
society of the rich, at the same time any old friend from 
Georgetown or St. Louis, or any old soldier, was sure of 
a hearing, and if their requests were proper they were 
granted instantly and as a matter of pleasure. He gave 
away large sums of money to people who made some 
sentimental demand upon him. He assisted wherever his 
soft heart was touched, and he assisted unworthy people 
at times ; but he did not like to have people apply for 
ofhce. 

There is an element of pathos in the fact that his mother 
was not present at the inauguration. She never saw 
Washington, never saw her son surrounded by the evi- 

396 




liannah Simpson Grant, mother of General Grant. 
From an original photograph owned by Helen M. Burke of La Crosse, Wisconsin. 



GRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE 397 

dences of his great power and attainment. Uncle Jesse 
was present, with his daughter Jennie, but they were not 
marked figures. Not for them were the splendors of the 
White House. It is related of the general's mother that 
a friend, calling upon her at about the time of inaugura- 
tion, found her moving quietly about the small home in 
Covington, Kentucky, which she kept in order with her 
own work-scarred hands. When the friend said, " It must 
make you very proud to think of your son being made 
President," she murmured an inaudible word; and when 
asked the direct question, " Would n't you like to be 
present at the ceremony?" she looked as though she had 
not heard the visitor's voice, and did not reply. She was 
the mother of the man. 

The Dents, however, were in evidence. Naturally, Mrs. 
Grant desired her family to be with her, and her sisters, 
Mrs. Sharpe and Mrs. Casey, as well as her father and 
brother, became residents in Washington, and were often 
at the White House. Colonel Dent, old, gray, irascible, 
and unreconstructed, was able at last to sit under the roof- 
tree of his " no-account son-in-law," and find that roof- 
tree one under which a long line of Presidents had lived. 

Old Jesse Grant occasionally came on during the ad- 
ministration, and put up at a cheap hotel not far from the 
Executive Mansion. He called on his son, or went driv- 
ing with him, but did not seek close companionship with 
autocratic Father Dent. They remained irreconcilable, 
and mutually pitied and despised each other. They rep- 
resented widely separated ideals of citizenship. 

During the first summer the President spent some 
weeks at Long Branch, exposed to all the gaieties, forms, 
and ceremonies of fashionable society, which he bore with 
most patiently, even to attempting the lancers. It was a 
hard situation for a plain old soldier whose lines of life 
had lain far from such scenes. It brought out a curious 
phase of his nature : it defined his limitations. " Madam, 
I had rather storm a fort than attempt another dance," he 
once said to his partner. 

The many receptions to which he was subjected during 
this time brought out one of the most marvelous of his 



398 LIFE OF GRANT 

mental endowments — his memory. He seemed to forget 
nothing. He never seemed to scrutinize any person or 
thing, and yet he remembered, without effort, everything 
which passed before his eyes. He never forgot a face. 
A thousand cases might be cited to show his astounding 
memory for faces ; nothing in history exceeds it. He 
could remember every one he had ever seen, even for a 
moment, though scores of years might have intervened, 
and a million other personalities have filed before him. 
This power cannot be exaggerated, nor the value of it 
overestimated. 

In Washington during the second winter society con- 
tinued to be a secondary thing. The war had not yet 
passed away as a visible presence, and the general was 
almost as military in his daily habit as when a commander- 
in-chief ; that is to say, he attended strictly to his work, 
and his work was the need of governing a nation nearly 
half of which was under martial law. 

His summers were spent at Long Branch, which he liked 
exceedingly. During the second year he purchased a 
couple of plots of land there, and built two modest cot- 
tages, one for his own use, and one to rent. He took his 
horses with him during his second year, and his principal 
amusement was driving. Each day he whirled away into 
the country, and soon came to know every lane and by- 
way for miles. This diversion was innocent enough, one 
would think, but it did not escape the attention of his 
enemies. 

His turnouts were described as the most magnificent 
ever seen. Each brass mounting became solid gold. His 
little cottages were exaggerated into mansions, and every 
possible epithet was employed to make it appear that he 
was addicted to fast horses and fast living. He was said to 
" show already the effects of the larder and the wine-cel- 
lar." The cartoonists represented him as a heavy, sullen 
man, followed about by two equally sullen bull-pups. He 
was called the " dog-fancier," when, as a matter of fact, 
he had never owned a dog in his life, and could not bear 
to have them around him. 

On his part, he said he went away from Washington in 



GRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE 399 

the summer to escape the persecution of office-seekers and 
newspaper men, but found little freedom even there. He 
was suffering the penalty of being President in a land of 
free speech and free press. After a few weeks of this 
partial escape from care, the papers began to howl about 
"seaside loiterings " and "absenteeism." He was forced 
to return to Washington, even though nothing could really 
be transacted there. 

Notwithstanding all the talk about military sentinels, 
secretaries, and forms, he remained the most absolutely 
accessible President in a long line of Presidents. Any 
one could reach him and talk with him, and everybody 
did — Indians, negroes. Southerners, Northerners, beggars, 
everybody, anybody. True, he did not talk to them, 
but he listened to what they had to say patiently, if not 
courteously. He was always impatient of injustice and 
sympathetic of the poor. His friend George W. Curtis 
considered him generous to a fault, and tried to keep 
beggars from him. 

He was absolutely non-esthetic. In his world the 
word " art " had very little meaning; of painting, sculpture, 
he knew nothing, of the drama next to nothing. He did 
not cultivate the society of writers or scholars, and was not 
at ease with them. His life had been serious, but it had led 
along roads far separated from art and music. The politi- 
cal world has no need of and little tolerance for the finer 
qualities of life, and the four years of the war and the 
three years of reconstruction had added little to General 
Grant's acquirements in ways that would fit him for the 
social duties bearing upon the head of the nation. He 
was dignified and self-contained always, but never what 
could be called polished or courtly in manner. When his 
thought might offend, he kept silence, speaking only when 
it became necessary to do so. He was always considerate 
and deferential to women, but in no sense gallant. He 
had never had, even in youth, the slightest touch of the 
manners of a beau. 

Mrs. Grant was almost equally plain and simple in her 
manners. Her education was even less liberal than her 
husband's. St. Louis in her youth was a small Western 



400 LIFE OF GRANT 

town, and its educational facilities were not high. Her 
schooling was all attained before she was seventeen years 
of age. Thereafter she was, like the general himself, self- 
educated. She had, however, the American woman's 
power of adaptation, and she had, also, the early training 
of a Southern woman in hospitality, and had the desire to 
use and enjoy all the social pleasures connected with her 
husband's high office. She delighted in receptions and 
parties, and was never bored or wearied by them. Even 
before election, as General Grant's wife, she had begun 
to hold successful receptions, and had managed by some 
means to make the general take part in them. 

Grant was not a reader; that is to say, he read for in- 
formation — to obtain light on the subject in hand, not for 
general information. He made a point of going to the 
bottom of every subject upon which he was called upon 
to render judgment, and often amazed specialists by the 
width and accuracy of his information ; but all this was 
not reading in the ordinary sense. He studied the news- 
papers with keen scrutiny, but he was too busy and too 
much involved in practical affairs to sit down of an even- 
ing in his library and read on general lines of culture and 
for enjoyment. He played cards for diversion, or sat in 
conversation with his friends. He enjoyed talk and con- 
versation, even when he did not join in it. He was an 
extremely social man. He had few intimate friends, but 
those few he loved to visit. " He was absolutely unap- 
proachable, save by his friends," said Colonel Nicolay. 
" Any one could come into his presence ; he had no forms 
or ceremonies ; but only a few people could get at his 
thought. ... I have seen a man talk to Grant listening in 
rigid irresponse till, in sheer self-defense, the visitor was 
forced to rise and flee from the President's terrible accus- 
ing silence." 

Society in those days in Washington was divided very 
markedly into two classes — the Republican and transitory 
society, and the resident society, which was almost entirely 
Southern in sentiment. During the Lincoln administra- 
tion the aristocratic secession families held no intercourse 
with the " vulgarian who occupied the White House " ; 



GRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE 40I 

and during the Grant administration most of these rebel- 
lious ones continued to hold aloof. The White House 
was called the " Dents' Retreat." In their estimation, the 
Grants were very plain and unimposing people indeed. 
According to sly remark, they were " distressingly bour- 
geois." Their plain, homely Western manners were ridi- 
culed. " What a pity we have not a gentleman in the 
White House!" deplored some of the plain-spoken dames 
to whom Lincoln had been the " boor," the " gorilla," 
and to whom Grant was the " dummy" and the " smoky 
Caesar." He was openly called a " rude man of vulgar 
tastes," an accident of war, and the tool of a military ring. 
These critics lashed themselves into a fury which is won- 
derful to read about. 

The White House receptions were attended, therefore, 
very largely by the officers of the army, the office-holders, 
and the visiting Republicans. Those who had been 
prominent at public functions in Buchanan's time knew 
nothing of what went on there, except by hearsay. They 
were quite ready to believe (and to spread) the stories of 
drunkenness on the part of the President, and the reported 
blunders in etiquette committed by his wife. Everything 
he did was exposed to the most devouring light of pub- 
licity. No President had ever had the search-Hght of 
reportorial curiosity so vividly cast upon him. 

It will be seen that the position carried with it certain 
social difficulties. The President was unfitted by all his 
training for the niceties of social intercourse. He had 
refused to take dancing-lessons at West Point, and his life 
had been spent far from cities and among the rude sur- 
roundings of camp and cantonment life. Forms and cere- 
monies faced him now at every turn, and had it not been 
for the manly seriousness of his thought and the inherent 
considerateness of his nature, he would have been un- 
pleasantly brusque in manner. Asa matter of fact he was 
never awkward, never flurried, though he might be distrait 
and unresponsive and sometimes inelegant. He was always 
the same in public — reserved, composed, self-restrained. 

When he first came East to receive his nomination as 
chief of all the armies, his look and bearing— as John 



402 LIFE OF GRANT 

Burroughs testified — were distinctly countrified. This 
appearance had partly worn away. He had gained greater 
self-control under social pressure, and had attained a con- 
ception of what was due him in his position. He had 
great native dignity, also, though it was unobtrusive. His 
voice, so soft and gentle, was very impressive, was capable 
of inexorable inflections. 

" At first he was inclined to make a visit upon any one 
whom he liked, whether they had first called upon him or 
not. It was some time before he consented to wear the 
conventional swallowtail coat, and the white tie he par- 
ticularly disliked. But when he discovered that it was 
easier to conform than to hold out against these regula- 
tions, he acquiesced. When he ascertained the impor- 
tance put upon visits, in this world of high ofificialdom, he 
insisted they should be paid and returned punctiliously. 
He considered his friends in this more than himself. He 
had no wish to neglect or olTend." 

While sphinx-like and austere in public, he was in pri- 
vate a very social man. He delighted in the presence 
of brilliant talkers. He enjoyed the company of bright 
women. He was a hard man to entertain, however. 
" He would sit and listen and listen, without saying a 
word, having a good time all along, but letting his com- 
panion do the talk." He liked young people, and the 
boys playing ball behind the White House sometimes had 
him for spectator and made him umpire in their games. 
Occasionally he took a hand at the bat, to the delight of 
the boys, who loved him and had no awe of him. " After 
playing awhile, he put his hands behind him, and strolled 
away down the avenue. He seemed a kind and fatherly 
man to us." 

Very early in his career in the White House, an old 
friend from Cincinnati, in making a call upon him, saw 
the two natures of the man most dramatically set forth. 
They were in full tide of talk. The President, very easy 
and genuine, was voicing reminiscences without the slight- 
est assumption of reserve. His face was aglow and his 
voice tender. There was nothing to remind his visitor 
that he was talking to the President of the United 



GRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE 403 

States— to the " sullen bull-dog warrior," or to the 
" sphinx." 

A visitor was announced in the outer chamber. A 
delegation, perhaps, of politicians was waiting. Grant 
arose, walked through the open door into the public office, 
and faced his callers. In those few steps he was trans- 
formed into the " enigma " and the " man of iron." With 
head slightly bent, with thin lips closed, he listened in 
absolute silence during the strenuous statement of his 
callers. Then, uttering a few words in a low voice, he 
turned abruptly on his heel, reentered the private office, 
took his seat opposite his friend, and entered again upon 
an animated conversation concerning old times and old 
friends in Ohio. " He could be granite— by the Lord, he 
could be granite," said an old subordinate ; and many an 
office-seeker found this out. 

He still continued to walk in the street like any other 
citizen, but there were certain things which he no longer 
felt free to do. " He did not ride in the street-car while 
he was President, although often before he had mortified 
his staff and his family by using that democratic convey- 
ance," says Badeau. " He was careful whom he visited, and 
regarded etiquette scrupulously in this matter, selecting the 
company and arranging the order of seats at his dinners." 
He was not responsive. He had no light talk. He very 
seldom helped people out of conversational difficulty. As 
we have shown, he waited for them to finish ; he did not 
help them to speak. In his public receptions he shook 
hands with all, but no word of his aided them through 
their embarrassments. This, however, was negative. On 
his positive side, he was careful not to injure the feelings 
of others. He never gossiped, neither would he permit 
it about him. No one presumed to become obscene in his 
presence. At the same time, he was not a man of keenly 
sensitive presence. He reeked with tobacco. He was the 
most appalling smoker of his time, with Edwin Booth 
a close second. His cigars were black, rank, poisonous, 
and he consumed immense quantities of them. Aside 
from this habit, his presence was pleasant. His hands 
were well cared for and his clothes in order. 



404 LIFE OF GRANT 

A correspondent from the Old World was surprised to 
find the Capitol grounds unguarded, the gates unlocked, 
and the ruler of the nation dwelling in an open palace, as 
if the United States were peopled with none but honest 
men and friends. The White House seemed a shabby 
residence for a great ruler, but the President made him- 
self so agreeable that the visitor soon forgot the discom- 
forts of the house. 

Like all great men, he is simplicity itself. I had heard a great 
deal of the gallant soldier, but I never felt more impressed. He 
talks litde. If possible, he receives every one. I found this 
great man affable and just in his remarks, courteous in his 
demeanor, and the mode in which he shakes hands told me at 
once of his sincerity and honesty. None of his portraits do him 
justice. His head is larger than any of the portraits represent. 
His beard is fair, and there is a peculiar softness in his eyes. 
And in the few sentences with which he favored me I perceived 
the most robust common sense. I left the Executive Mansion 
convinced that the United States had an honest man at its head 
— a soldier with an iron will. 

And with a flash of prophetic insight, the writer con- 
cluded : 

And God knows how soon his skill may be required to put 
down enemies at home or abroad. 

He was very considerate of his wife. Within certain 
well-defined limits, he deferred to her judgment. He did 
whatever was possible to add to her comfort and happi- 
ness. She came first in all his thoughts. He was accus- 
tomed to come down to the drawing-room on the days 
when she received her friends, and move about among 
them most informally and with apparent pleasure. He 
was entirely devoted to his children, and when they were 
at home often denied himself to the public in order to 
enjoy their presence to the full. More than once these 
days of seclusion with his family gave rise to unjust sus- 
picion and cruel comment on the part of his enemies. 

One day Mrs. Grant, after describing a cameo which a 



GRANT IN THE WHITE HOUSE 405 

friend had just shown her, and which she much admired, 
said to the President: " Ulysses, I want a profile of you." 

" Oh, have n't I had pictures enough taken?" he pro- 
tested. 

" No," replied Mrs. Grant; " you have n't a single pro- 
file view, and I want one." 

After a moment's hesitation, and with a little sigh, he 
said: "Very well; you shall have one." 

A day or two later the family was appalled to see the 
President of the United States enter the room wearing 
English mutton-chop whiskers, and looking like an Epis- 
copal clergyman. His mustache was shaved away clean, 
and his chin completely exposed. For an instant they 
hardly knew him ; he seemed like another person. 

"Why, Ulysses, what have you been doing?" cried 
Mrs. Grant, in vast astonishment and dismay. 

" I 've been having a profile taken," he replied. 

In his absent-minded simplicity, and with his accus- 
tomed thoroughness, he had fought the battle clear 
through. He had given her a genuine profile, unobstructed 
by a single hair! Thus it happens that there is at least 
one picture of General Grant in existence which shows 
the rugged line of his profile face. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

grant's reelection to the presidency 

THE administration pushed steadily forward along the 
lines of the first message. Civil-service reform was 
persistently urged upon Congress, and the President's 
peaceful Indian policy was put into effect. His recom- 
mendation that the Fifteenth Amendment be adopted had 
carried it triumphantly through. General amnesty was 
recommended. Virginia was admitted early in 1870, and 
was followed by Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas ; and the 
Union was nominally restored, but only nominally, for the 
South was determined to exclude the carpet-baggers and 
the negroes from their legislative halls, and to stop the 
reckless legislation which had already buried them beneath 
a load of debt. It was manifest that a condition which 
sent Northern politicians and presiding elders of the colored 
church to represent the South in the United States Senate 
could not last. 

Meanwhile, some of Grant's great companion figures were 
passing away. RawHns lived only till September ; Stanton 
died early in the new year, and so did Thomas. The 
friends of Thomas always claimed that their hero had been 
neglected by Grant in favor of Sheridan and Sherman, 
and that the " Rock of Chickamauga " was the great 
soldier of the war. General Meade died not long after, 
and his son claimed that Sheridan had been promoted in 
the regular service over his father's head. Stanton felt 
that his work had never been fully appreciated by the 

nation, and probably Grant sympathized with him in this 

406 



grant's reelection to the presidency 407 

feeling, for he appointed him to a seat on the supreme 
bench. Stanton's gratitude was deep and outspoken. 
He was unable at the time to leave his room, but he 
wrote a beautiful letter of acknowledgment. He died 
soon after, with a feeling that Grant, at least, had not 
neglected him. 

The claims of the friends of the great generals and 
public men whom Grant had defeated or supplanted were 
perfectly natural and unavoidable. They arose out of the 
inability of an unsuccessful candidate to admit the entire 
worthiness of the successful man. 

Early in his term the President appointed a commission 
to study Santo Domingo and report on the advisability of 
annexing it. He moved in this vigorously, because he 
considered it important in its bearings upon the conditions 
of the South. He conceived that the acquirement of this 
island by the United States would afford an outlet for the 
negroes, and so compel better treatment of those who 
remained. It would be an open doorway for possible 
escape. He met with the most violent opposition, how- 
ever. Charles Sumner became his most violent assailant, 
charging corruption and an imperial use of power on the 
part of the President. 

The annexation plan was rejected, but five months later 
the President brought the matter up again, and recom- 
mended the investigation of the whole matter by a com- 
mittee. He had been accused, and he demanded that 
Sumner's accusations be taken up and sifted. Congress 
authorized the commission, and the President appointed 
Andrew D. White, President of Cornell University, Senator 
Wade of Ohio, and Dr. S. G. Howe (a close friend of his 
accuser, Senator Sumner) as the members of the commis- 
sion. As the commission was about to set forth, he called 
Andrew D. White aside, and said, with the sternest yet 
most quiet inflections : 

" As President of the United States, I have no orders 
to give you. My duty as President ended with your 
nomination. As a man, I have a right to give some in- 
structions. It has been publicly charged tiiat I am con- 
nected with transactions in the island of Santo Domingo 



408 LIFE OF GRANT 

looking to my personal advantage. Now, as a man, I 
charge you strictly that if you find that I am, directly or 
indirectly, in the least degree connected with any such 
transactions in the island of Santo Domingo, drag me forth 
and expose me fully to the American people." 

The commissioners unanimously sustained the President 
in their report, and completely exonerated him from the 
slightest complicity with any doubtful transaction; but 
Sumner, embittered because Grant refused to accede to 
his demands for office for his friends, and for other reasons, 
kept up his relentless warfare to the end. 

The President was called upon at once to deal with the 
Kuklux Klan, which had grown to enormous and wide- 
spread power; and at last, at the request of the governor 
of South Carolina, he summoned the Klan to disperse within 
thirty days, and sent a message to Congress, asking for 
specific legislation to enable him to enforce the constitu- 
tional amendment. The lower house passed a bill which 
gave him power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus 
wherever he found it necessary to keep the peace, and 
substitute therefor martial law. The Senate concurred in 
the act. This was a dangerous and arbitrary measure, 
and likely to be misused under any man's hand, but it 
seemed necessary at the time. Grant was in earnest in his 
determination to stop murder and intimidation. 

In the main the administration kept in line with popular 
wish. So far as he knew, the President conformed to the 
will of the majority. It was the desire of the North that 
the negro should be protected in all his civil rights ; that 
he should be educated ; that he should hold office, when 
qualified ; and that the spirit represented by the Kuklux 
should be crushed out. 

All these were undoubtedly war measures, which Grant 
was as eager to leave behind as any individual patriot 
could possibly be. Beyond such enactment, the better 
citizens of the nation desired to see the public debt re- 
duced, government service economized, and all forms of 
transportation and industry encouraged in order that the 
new lands of the West might be settled and improved. 
They had little complaint to make of the President. Only 



grant's reelection to the presidency 409 

the idealists had any honest grievance against Grant, and 
their mistake consisted in applying the judgments of peace 
to a time of warfare ; for while the South was conquered 
and nominally at peace, the war spirit survived naturally 
in other forms. The conditions demanded of the consti- 
tutional head of the army and navy a larger exercise of 
the purely military side of his official nature than would 
have been called out ten years later. 

The first serious charge made against him personally 
arose in September during his first year. A clique of 
stock-brokers arranged a corner in gold, to the dismay and 
panic of trade. The general had indiscreetly allowed him- 
self to partake of the hospitalities of Mr. James Fisk, Jr., 
and Mr. Jay Gould, two of the leaders in this movement. 
It also appeared that Mr. A. R. Corbin, who had married 
the President's sister, was concerned in this gold specula- 
tion, and therefore the ready enemies of the President 
boldly announced that he himself was implicated, and 
that he had given to these men private intimations of 
what was to be the policy of the government with regard 
to gold. 

To this serious charge the general was obliged to reply. 
He admitted that he had accepted the hospitality of Mr. 
Fisk, and that Mr. Fisk had attempted to secure from him 
private information, but that he had rebuked him by ask- 
ing, "Would that be fair?" and had further said to Mr. 
Fisk : " You will get your information in precisely the 
same way that the whole country will be informed, — 
through the notice of the Treasurer of the United States 
to the newspapers, — thus excluding any possible charge 
of favoritism." 

His friends also claimed that not only had he refused 
to give such information, but that immediately upon 
learning the condition of affairs he had ordered the Trea- 
sury to sell five millions of gold, which at once relieved 
the market and stopped the rush. He was at the time 
visiting a cousin in Washington, Pennsylvania, a little 
town some distance from the railroad, and knew nothing 
about the panic until it was at its height, but acted in- 
stantly upon being informed. 



4IO LIFE OF GRANT 

All this was finally believed, not only by the President's 
friends, but by all his honorable enemies ; but ev^en his 
best friends were forced to admit that he had not used 
good taste in allowing himself to be seen socially with Mr. 
Fisk and his like. 

One of his most merciless critics said : 

" General Grant is unfortunate. He has degraded him- 
self by his too ready acceptance of gifts, which a more 
chivalric character would have proudly spurned, or, at 
least, have courteously declined. A man in his position 
should be above the necessity of explaining. A President 
notoriously loaded down with presents is at an unfortunate 
disadvantage when the web of circumstances seems to 
connect him with a doubtful transaction." 

There was a sting of truth in all this which the friends 
of General Grant could not but feel. His unsuspicious 
good nature and his easy valuation of money had led him 
to accept favors which a more scrupulous man might have 
refused. This did not arise from his love of gold, for he 
gave as freely as he received. He accepted a gift in the 
direct and whole-souled way in which he would make one, 
but there was too much truth in the critic's word. General 
Grant should have been above the necessity of explaining 
his connection with Fisk. 

He came out of the whole transaction the victim of men 
who had imposed on his peculiarly amiable and confiding 
nature, but some of the criticisms remained. He had 
associated himself with rich men, rather than with states- 
men and patriots. In his desire to avoid politicians, he 
seemed likely to fall among thieves. 

As the third year brought no diminution of Grant's 
popularity, and it was seen that he would be a candidate 
for a second term, the opposition (which had been growing 
naturally out of the wish of those who were out to oust 
those who were in, and from the restless desire of a cer- 
tain type of voter to try some one else) became really 
formidable, and found its expression in the speeches ot 
men like Carl Schurz, B. Gratz Brown, and Charles Sum- 
ner. Under their leadership was seen a curious coquetry 
on the part of the " Liberal Republicans " with the " Bour- 



GRANTS REELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY 4 II 

bon Democracy," and at last they united under one banner, 
with one war-cry: "Anything to beat Grant!" There- 
after his administration was searched with maHgnant care, 
and every possible effort made to discredit it. Men like 
Sumner seemed more eager to destroy Grant than to 
uphold measures to reunite the nation under a common 
constitution. 

The peace which the country enjoyed was called a 
"bayoneted peace" and a "fawning upon power" by 
these critics. Grant was said to be " wax in the hands of 
evil counselors," and it was said that he could not say no 
to his friends, while others, with equal decision, denounced 
him as " usurper Grant," the " man of iron," the " man on 
horseback." According to these prophets of evil, he was 
surrounded by a "military ring" composed of Generals 
Babcock, Porter, Belknap, and Ingalls. His acts of usur- 
pation were detailed. He had usurped power by suspend- 
ing, under the Kuklux Bill, the right of habeas corpus in 
the Southern States, and substituting therefor military 
arrest. He had usurped the judicial power by enlarging 
the number of judges on the supreme bench for political 
purposes, and had violated the rights of the Senate by 
"discarding" Senator Sumner from the chairmanship of 
the Committee on Foreign Relations, and accepting the 
counsels of Porter, Babcock, et al., who wished to per- 
petuate him in power for their own ends. He had vio- 
lated the rights of Congress, to which is intrusted the 
sole power of making war, by forming an illegitimate 
alliance (through a military member of his household) 
with the usurper Baez of Santo Domingo, and by defend- 
ing him from the action of Spain, with which the United 
States was at peace. Furthermore, he had attacked the 
vital powers of the people by overawing a peaceful assem- 
blage of voters with the presence of United States troops 
in the State of Louisiana. 

These were a few of the charges of the press; but it 
was reserved for Senator Sumner, the " discarded chairman 
of the Committee on P"oreign Relations," to give the final 
death-dealing blow to President Grant. On the last day 
of May, in the fourth year of the administration, the 



412 LIFE OF GRANT 

senator, rising from his seat, launched his long-threaten- 
ing imperial thunderbolt. It was carefully planned and 
malignantly executed. It was his deliberate intention to 
destroy General Grant's chances for reelection. He had 
waited till the nominating convention was about to as- 
semble. The excitement of the people in the North was 
intense. The Senate was crowded ; the reporters, with 
sharpened pencils, leaned forward to catch every word. 
Outside in the streets, the word ran from street to street : 
" Sumner is attacking Grant." It produced almost the 
effect of a personal assault with physical means. 

The philippic was worthy of the man. It was long and 
it was brutally direct. It may be taken to sum up every 
indictment against the President's administration which 
had any possibility of being sustained. It omitted no- 
thing; it glossed nothing. 

According to the embittered senator, the nation was in 
great peril from the ambitious desire of President Grant 
to be and continue the absolute dictator of the nation's 
policy. The President had trodden the Constitution under 
foot. He had treated the Presidential office as little better 
than a plaything or perquisite. His exalted trust had been 
made a personal indulgence, wherein palace-cars, fast 
horses, and seaside loiterings had figured more largely 
than attention to duties. He had used the office to enrich 
his own family on a scale of nepotism hardly equaled in 
the world. The vast appointing power conferred by the 
Constitution had been employed to reward his friends, to 
punish his opponents, and to advance his election to a 
second term. 

"The President now challenges inquiry," continued the 
senator, " and I meet the challenge, selecting two typical 
charges. Thirteen relations of the President are billeted 
on the country, not one of whom, but for this relationship, 
would hold office. Beyond this list are other relations, 
showing that this strange abuse did not stop with relatives, 
but widened to include relatives of relatives. In the 
matter of gift-taking, the President has notoriously taken 
gifts. He has appointed to his cabinet Greeks bearing 
gifts, apparently without seeing the indecorum, not to say 
indecency, of the transaction. 



grant's reelection to the presidency 413 

" Nor did the case of the first Secretary of State, ap- 
pointed as a personal compHment, differ in character from 
the appointment to the custom-house of New York City 
of a man who had no other recommendation than that 
he had brought acceptable gifts to President Grant, 

" His government has been a personal government, semi- 
military in character, abhorrent to republican institutions. 
The White House has become a military headquarters, 
and the strange spectacle was daily seen of messages borne 
to the Senate by officers of the regular army. Other 
Presidents had entered upon office with a certain modesty 
and distrust; but this soldier, absolutely untried in civil 
life, entered upon the sublime duties of President saying: 
' The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them 
without fear.' In his cabinet-making he has discarded all 
tradition, usage, and propriety. To the dishonor of the 
civil service, and in total disregard of precedent, he has 
surrounded himself with officers of the army, substituting 
military forms for those of civil life, although Congress 
had shown a purpose to limit the employment of military 
officers by three statutes. 

" As a candidate for reelection, he now invites judgment. 
Can Republicans, without departing from all obligations, 
whether of party or patriotism, recognize our ambitious 
Caesar as a proper representative ? Can we take the 
fearful responsibility of his prolonged empire? There is 
a demand for reform in the civil service, and the President 
formally adopts this demand ; but he neglects the first step, 
which depends on himself. If he is sincere, he will declare 
against a second term. 

" He has become the great Presidential quarreler, with 
more contentions than all other Presidents together, all of 
which began and continued from his dictatorial spirit. It 
might well be asked whether the American people were 
ready to submit to the domination of one man, and that 
man a soldier without experience and without even suc- 
cessful business ability." 

In alluding to the nation's foreign relations, the sena- 
tor could not forbear to say that never before had the 
nation's management been so wanting in ability and so 
absolutely without character. In every direction, inter- 



414 LIFE OF GRANT 

national affairs were inextricably muddled. " Not with- 
out anxiety," he concluded, " do I await the national 
convention. But I have an earnest hope that the men 
there gathered together will bring the Republican party 
into its ancient harmony, saving it from the personal pre- 
tensions of one man." 

This speech became the book and precept of the opposi- 
tion. No charges went beyond it in scope ; few exceeded 
it in bitterness. The friends of the administration, how- 
ever, professed to find in it very little that could be taken 
seriously. It had long been known that Senator Sumner 
was a violent opponent of the President, and that he was 
ambitious to be President himself, and it was slyly insinu- 
ated that this lofty statesman had come to percei\e the 
danger of retaining Grant in office upon being " dis- 
carded " from the Committee on Foreign Relations. He 
was placed in the snarling group of disappointed applicants 
for office, and his whole assault discredited. The friends 
of the President said the charge of nepotism was absurd ; 
that it was not a question of whether these thirteen office- 
holders were brothers-in-law to General Grant or not, but 
whether they performed their duties acceptably. The 
charge was puerile at its best, for out of sixty or seventy 
thousand offices, some twelve or thirteen only were filled 
by persons in some way related to the President. This 
could not be held to be a very grave offense, although 
called the "grossest nepotism" by the senator in opposi- 
tion. It was true that the President's father was a small 
postmaster in Kentucky, but he had been appointed under 
Johnson, and it was not alleged that he was either inca- 
pable or dishonest. The mere fact of being related to 
President Grant was not in itself exactly criminal. 

With regard to the charge that his was a personal gov- 
ernment, they would call attention to the fact that one 
man in America could rule only because a majority of 
people thought as he did. The President in his public 
acts had represented the majority of the people, and the 
coming convention and the succeeding election would 
prove this to be true. If the President had quarreled 
with Sumner, Motley, Chase, Greeley, Schurz, and Trum- 



GRANT'S REELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY 415 

bull, he had probably done so with good reason, the truth 
of the matter being that all of these gentlemen considered 
themselves " bigger men than Grant," and some of them 
had secret hopes of being Presidential candidates, or, at 
least, " cabinet timber," at the coming convention. Sena- 
tor Sumner, by his violence, by the too evident malice of 
his attack just before the convention, had done only injury 
to himself. The friends of General Grant would rally all 
the closer to him ; and as for the senator himself, he had 
committed political hara-kiri. He was as dead as Julius 
Caesar. Grant would be nominated by acclamation. 

This is exactly what happened. The convention, meet- 
ing six days later in Philadelphia, came together roaring 
with enthusiasm for the " man of Appomattox." Of 
course the opposition papers made light of the meeting. 
It was called the " feast of Lupercal," the " howling farce," 
and the " meeting of the Grant office-holders." Its mem- 
bers were called the " Grant strikers" and the "faithful." 
It was said, " They come a-purpose," for it was evident 
at the start that the President was to be renominated. 
" They Present a Crown to Caesar " was one of the famous 
newspaper headings. 

The orators at this convention also used the speech of 
Senator Sumner as a text, and continued to state the 
other side. Attention was called to the fact that after 
four years of trial there was more enthusiasm than when 
General Grant's name was first presented for the Presi- 
dency. " One good term deserves another " was inscribed 
on their banners. " He has blessed the country, and we 
will honor him." They wished to give him time to finish 
his work of crushing out the Kuklux and saving the negro. 
He had made some mistakes, but the country wanted him 
four years longer. He was doing well. No serious charge 
against him had been sustained. 

Senator Morton arose, and, in effect, replied to Sum- 
ner : " The President has not abused law ; he has only 
executed it. The Kuklux Law was passed to insure fair 
and honest elections, and to prevent persecution of the 
negroes. In that spirit it has been enforced." The Presi- 
dent had committed errors, but most of them were trivial. 



4l6 LIFE OF GRANT 

Four years ago the President had said, " I have no policy 
to urge against the wishes of the people," and in all 
essential matters he had fostered and protected the inter- 
ests of the people. " No man is greater than his party," 
concluded Senator Morton. " Whenever General Grant 
shall betray the principles of the Republican party, when- 
ever he shall become recreant to his high duties, he will 
pass away, as other men have passed away. He will be 
condemned by the popular breath, as other leaders have 
been condemned." 

To this other speakers added that it was of no value to 
call the President the "dog-fancier," the "dummy," the 
"butcher," and other names of that character. Calling 
names was not argument, particularly on the part of those 
who had been his friends in other days, and who were now 
disappointed office-seekers. " Who is this man," they 
asked, "who is called the American Caesar?" He is 
the man who disbanded more than five hundred thousand 
men in 1865, all armed and under his absolute command. 
Was this done like Caesar? He is the man who, when 
the war was over, instantly began cutting down the ex- 
penses of the army, and reducing its numbers with a 
rapidity hitherto unparalleled. Was that the way of 
military tyrants? No man in the world had ever held 
such power and used it with greater moderation, and the 
American people would justify him. "This convention," 
they said, "will acquit him of every charge." 

This the convention did. It threw every vote to Ulysses 
Grant, seven hundred and sixty-two in number, and made 
him once again the absolutely unanimous candidate of the 
Republican party ; and Sumner was defeated. His vault- 
ing ambition had overleaped itself and fallen on the outer 
side. 

It was a pathetic and regrettable sacrifice of a good and 
simple-hearted man when Horace Greeley consented to 
accept the nomination of the Liberal Republicans and the 
Bourbon Democracy. He was led as a lamb to the 
slaughter. The Democratic party knew perfectly well 
that it had not the slightest chance of success with a 
straight nomination, but it hoped by seconding the nomi- 



grant's reelection to the presidency 417 

nation of " honest old Horace " to catch the Liberal or 
dissatisfied Republican votes. It is doubtful, however, 
whether any leader of the party, except Greeley himself, 
expected to win. It was this very hopelessness of their 
position which gave such relentless ferocity to their assaults 
upon the good name of General Grant. 

In the interval between June and November the Presi- 
dent's life was scrutinized as never before. Every minut- 
est act, every slightest word, was seized upon and distorted 
into the semblance of duplicity or crime. Cartoonists went 
to the farthest reach in delineating him as a man growing 
sodden and bestial in habit. All the reckless wits of the 
nation were again turned loose upon him, to ridicule him 
as a man of no address, as a vulgarian, and of no ability 
in any direction whatever, except, possibly, in hurling 
great masses of men upon a barricade. His military 
career was attacked. One journal never failed to picture 
him as a reeling despot wearing an imperial crown. All 
sense of decency was lost. The privacy of the President's 
home was invaded by these unclean spies. 

During all this period, the general, though he suffered 
acutely from this abuse on account of its effect on his 
children and his wife, remained silent. He made no ex- 
cuses nor apologies. He asked for no mercy. He did 
not insist upon his record, either in war or in peace. He 
left that for the honest and considerate citizens of America 
to study for themselves, expressing confidence in their 
verdict. Most of the charges he considered it beneath 
him to publicly notice. " I am willing to put my acts 
against Charles Sumner's words," he said. 

One of the most absurd of the charges against him 
was that he was already the richest President since the 
time of Washington. As a matter of fact, his salary of 
twenty-five thousand dollars a year went the way of all 
his other salaries. He saved comparatively little of his 
share, though Mrs. Grant laid something by, and induced 
him to make some purchases of land and houses. His 
principal speculation was the Dent farm on the Gravois, 
which he had bought in, and was using for fancy stock- 
raising at ruinous expense. This farm was listed by his 



4l8 LIFE OF GRANT 

enemies at one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, 
which was about three times its value. In a letter in 
1874, lie speaks of wishing to put out five or six thousand 
dollars on the farm, but would have to borrow it first. It 
never became a paying investment; on the contrary, it 
was a constant drain upon him. Ultimately he was forced 
to sell out all his stock at sacrifice sale, and rent the place. 

Letters written at this time to his agent, John F. Long, 
make no evasion of the fact that he was generally without 
ready funds. Many of the letters refer to the sale of part 
of the stock. Some of them detail with considerable 
minuteness the particular parts of the farm which the 
President considered best fitted for certain sorts of grains. 
In general they were curiously serene and unhurried, and 
contain no hint of the storm of opposition going on around 
him. 

A Western correspondent, writing of him at this time, 
pictures him as a plain, sad-faced man, absolutely without 
military surroundings or formalities of any kind, bending 
over his desk in the Executive Chamber. He had grown 
ten years older in appearance, and there was little in his 
manner to suggest the successful candidate for reelection, 
much less the imperial Caesar of the opposition press. 
Those who met him at this time speak of him as retaining 
all his gentleness and considerateness of manner. He was 
provoked into replying but once or twice. Once he talked 
upon the attitude of the Southern people, and expressed 
again with great emphasis his wish to see perfect harmony 
restored between the sections, and expressed also his 
determination to carry out the law impartially. A 
reporter visited the home of the President's father in 
Covington, and found it to be, not the palatial mansion 
delineated by Sumner and Dana, but a plain, two-story 
brick house with green blinds. Everything had the pecu- 
liarly plain and simple character of an American working- 
man's home. The floor was covered with a well-worn 
carpet. The table was set for tea with the simplest china 
and cutlery. A few unpretending pictures were on the 
wall. 

Uncle Jesse himself at this time was reported to be a 



grant's reelection to the presidency 419 

stooping old man walking with a crutch. He was also 
exceedinglj^ hard of hearing. He had suffered from a 
stroke of paralysis some six months before, and, although 
slowly recovering, was unable to talk or think very clearly 
on any subject. He was seventy-eight years of age, and 
had little hope of a speedy recovery. In reply to a ques- 
tion whether he thought his son would be elected again 
or not, he replied: "Well, I don't know much about it 
now. My eyes are so weak I can't read any more. But 
Mrs. Grant reads, and interests herself a good deal about 
politics. She is very reticent, though, just like the gen- 
eral. You never can tell what the general is going to do 
about anything. But let 's go into the parlor and talk it 
over with Mrs. Grant." 

The visitor found Mrs. Grant a rather small, thin, clear- 
visaged and well-preserved old lady. She was knitting 
stockings while she entertained a visitor in a calico dress. 
Mrs. Grant talked freely and with great shrewdness upon 
the political situation. She commented with some indig- 
nation upon the number of people who were claiming 
relationship with the general. She said : " I don't doubt 
but what every one of the people Ulysses has appointed 
were highly recommended to him by people who ought 
to know better. After all, they tell me generally that he 
has given the country a good administration." 

Ex- Governor Wells of Virginia, in a speech at Peters- 
burg, well expressed the popular feeling aroused in the 
country at large by Grant's enemies in their unscrupulous 
attacks upon him. He spoke in reply to the sneer of 
Ex-Confederate Major Kelly of Richmond, who had 
alluded to Grant as the " dummy driving his horse along 
the Jersey beach." 

" I am surprised that he, of all men, the chief magistrate 
of the queenly city of Richmond, who knows so well what 
decent respect requires, should have been betrayed into 
the use of such grossly improper language ; but as he has 
asked the question, I reply : 

" Who was the matchless hero of Donelson, Shiloh, 
Chattanooga, and Vicksburg? 

" The dummy who drives his horse along the Jersey beach. 



420 LIFE OF GRANT 

" Who was it that led a hundred thousand heroes to 
victory over Lee and his before unconquered army from 
the Rapidan to the Wilderness, to the James, to Peters- 
burg, to Richmond, and the old apple-tree at Appomat- 
tox? 

" It was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who was it that planned, that fought, that flanked, 
that shelled, that charged at Steedman, at Fort Hell, and 
Fort Damnation? 

" It was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who was it that seized the tiger of secession by the 
throat, and, holding him there, said to those who caviled, 
to those who hoped, and those who feared, ' I '11 fight it 
out on this line, if it takes all summer ' ? 

" // was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who was it, after the victory was won and the Union 
safe, said to Lee and the conquered army, whose courage, 
honor, and manhood he respected, ' Return to your homes, 
and you shall not be disturbed by the United States au- 
thorities so long as you observe the laws of the place where 
you reside ' ? 

" It was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who was it that said to Lee, ' Let the soldiers of your 
army who own the horses in their charge take them home 
with them, for they will need them for the spring plowing 
and other farm work ' ? 

" // was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who was it, when Lee, Wise, and other Confederate 
generals were indicted by a Virginia grand jury, said : 
' The officers and men paroled at Appomattox cannot 
be tried for treason ; good faith as well as true policy 
dictates that we should observe the conditions of that 
convention ' ? 

" // was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 



grant's reelection to the presidency 421 

" Who was it that said : ' Six years having elapsed since 
the last gun was fired, is it not time that the disabilities 
imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment should be re- 
moved? ' 

" It was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who was it that restored Virginia, and reclad her in 
the full, bright, shining garb of a sovereign State, and 
now, calm and serene, unangered, patient, and faithful, 
dares, unmindful of the threats, the abuse, and the living- 
slanders heaped upon him, to do his duty alike to friend 
and foe, to God, his country, and himself? 

" It was the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach. 

" Who is it that will live in the hearts of his country- 
men, revered at home and abroad, — the great soldier, the 
modest citizen, and the faithful public servant, unostenta- 
tious, unassuming, brave, without ambition, forbearing, 
resolute in doing what he deems right, but never offensive 
in asserting himself as soldier, general, or chief, — for a 
thousand years after his poor detractors have gone down 
to a forgotten grave? 

" // is the dummy driving his horse along the Jersey 
beach:' 

Against the irresistible force of such hero-worship 
detraction made no head. The leaders doubted, but the 
people believed. They lifted their hands in applause, 
and shouted back the single word, " Grant! " 

If a triumphant reelection can be taken as a refutation of 
charges against a President, then the first administration 
of General Grant was cleared of all serious indictment. It 
closed triumphantly. It was a good administration. It 
is true that disorder still existed in the South, where a 
ferocious and implacable minority opposed every effort at 
education, and every attempt on the part of the negro to 
acquire political rights. But whatever of this warfare 
existed, it was necessarily secret, scattered, and disorgan- 
ized, for Grant stood in stern though unangered opposi- 
tion to it. In spite of all the political entanglements, in 
spite of the war of the carpet-bagger and the rebel briga- 



422 LIFE OF GRANT 

dier, Grant continued his calm, undeviating course. " He 
was a force in the right direction," admitted one of his 
bitter rivals. 

He stood for education, for the use of the ballot accord- 
ing to the law on the statute-books. As Senator Morton 
said, he had striven to execute the law ; he had not abused 
it. No period in American history was ever so difficult, 
so intricate, and so liable to perversion and violence. It 
is probable that the angel Michael himself would have 
been sharply criticized, if not accused of injustice, in ap- 
plying the rules of high heaven's court to the Southern 
States. Measured by the fate of conquered people in the 
past, the South had no right to complain. The rule of 
the North was unprecedentedly pacificatory. No such 
situation had ever before existed. A part of the Union, 
the Southern citizens, were not only a conquered people, 
but a people having among them six millions of black men 
who had lately been their slaves, for whose rights the 
North had fought, and whose care it was the bounden 
duty of the conquering people to assume. The South 
expected too much ; the radicals of the North expected 
too much. Only a few who had risen to a perception 
of the racial difficulties involved comprehended that the 
problem demanded, not years, but generations, for solu- 
tion. The laws of growth, of social evolution, are unhast- 
ing, but sure. 

Grant's own feeling continued unchanged. " It is 
natural," he said in Atlanta, in 1865. It was natural 
that disorders should continue : they were merely the 
ebbing tide of war, each wave rising less high than the one 
which preceded it. He believed it to be his duty to hold 
firm government over the people, being not impatient of 
the slow progress. He had no hates ; that was his strong 
point. If he had neither the profound legal knowledge 
of Seward, the crafty statesmanship of Charles Sumner, 
nor the wide historical reading of Motley, he possessed 
what the people regarded as of more value : he had a 
thorough knowledge of the Southern people and of the 
reconstruction situation, and he had the mind and will to 
carry out his policy, no matter how the storm of politics 



grant's reelection to the presidency 423 

raged around him. As the tangle of lesser controversies 
melted away, Grant's larger policies stood revealed. 

There had been progress in the settlement of the social 
question, — that he knew, — and he approached his second 
term with a feeling of confidence. The time had come 
for a decisive advance. In his annual message at the 
opening of Congress in 187 1 he had said: 

More than six years having elapsed since the last hostile gun 
was fired between the armies then arrayed, the one for the 
perpetuation, the other for the destruction, of the Union, it may 
well be considered whether it is not now time that the disabilities 
imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment should be removed. . . . 
I do not see the advantage or propriety of excluding men from 
office merely because they were, before the Rebellion, of standing 
and character sufficient to be elected to positions requiring oaths 
to support the Constitution. ... It will be a happy condition 
of the country when the old citizens of these States will take an 
interest in public affairs, promulgate ideas honestly entertained, 
vote for men representing their views, and tolerate the same 
freedom of expression and of ballot in those of differing political 
convictions. 

This was certainly a very creditable sentiment for a 
"military despot" and a gloomy tyrant to utter, and 
those in the South who were inclined to a certain fairness 
of judgment could not but feel that they still had a friend 
in President Grant. Through his influence general amnesty 
was granted to all who were politically disabled, except- 
ing to a few who were considered to be outside the pale 
of pardon. He ended his first term with a decided gain 
in the good will of the Southern people. 



CHAPTER XLV 
grant's second term 

DURING the first year of Grant's second term, Jesse 
Grant died, in the eightieth year of his age. Though 
the President took a special train, he did not arrive in time 
to see his father alive. Old Jesse was reported to have 
said proudly : " I am the only man who ever lived to see 
his son twice elected to the Presidency." His last days 
were peaceful, though full of pain. He had long been a 
familiar figure in Covington, and his large frame, old- 
fashioned dress, and abstracted air had for many years 
attracted the gaze of the curious. He grew more eccen- 
tric as he grew older, but those who knew him best con- 
sidered him a man of real power, an honorable man, and 
one who had given many strong traits to his son. After 
the death of her husband, Mother Grant went to live with 
her daughter Jennie in Orange, New Jersey. 

From all the reports of Grant during this time, it would 
seem that he remained essentially the military commander, 
having few intimate friends outside Sherman, Sheridan, 
Ingalls, Beale, Babcock, and other of his trusted subordi- 
nates. Utterly simple and democratic, he was also sole 
executive. He took a useful hint, no matter whence it 
came, but he called no councils of war. He decided all 
questions for himself, and is to be held responsible for his 
decisions. His mind was essentially military, but he 
hated all tyranny or injustice. He had no inordinate am- 
bitions, but he came naturally to enjoy the honors of his 
high position. He had the pride of a soldier in doing his 
duty well, but the thought of going outside his duties did 
not find lodgment in his brain. He hated war, and the 

424 




Jesse Root Grant, father of General Grant, age 69 years. 
From an original photograph owned by Helen M. Burke uf La Crosse, Wisconsin. 



grant's second term 425 

Napoleonic idea of conquest for personal or national 
aggrandizement was entirely outside the circle of his 
mind. 

As he rose to read his second inaugural address, the 
general again faced a throng too great to hear a word he 
uttered. Again he stepped forward alone, but with less 
emotion than four years before. The fine exaltation of the 
first experience was gone. He looked older — much older 
— and heavier. He read no better than before, but his 
address was better composed, though not finer of spirit. 

He said it had been his endeavor in the past to maintain 
all the laws and to act for the best interests of all the 
people, and that he would continue on the same line. 
When he entered upon his first term of office the country 
had not yet recovered from the effects of a great revolu- 
tion, and three of the former States of the Union had not 
been restored. It seemed to him that no new question 
should be raised so long as that condition of affairs existed, 
and that, so far as he had been able to control events, the 
policy of the last four years had been to restore harmony 
and the public credit. He believed that our great nation 
was to be a guiding star to the other nations of the world 
which were struggling toward a republican form of gov- 
ernment. 

He alluded with candor to the defeat of his Santo 
Domingo plan, and said : 

" In future, while I hold my present office, the subject 
of the acquisition of territory must have the support of 
the people before I will recommend any proposition look- 
ing to such acquisition. I have no fear of the government 
becoming weakened by reason of extension of territory. 
Intercommunication by telegraph and steam has eliminated 
that. The great Governor of the world is preparing the 
nations of the earth to become one nation, speaking one 
language; and the time is coming when armies and navies 
will be no longer required. . . . 

" My efforts in the future will be directed to the resto- 
ration of good feeling between the different sections of 
our common country, to the restoration of our currency, 
to the construction of cheap routes of transit throughout 



426 LIFE OF GRANT 

the land, to the maintenance of friendly relations with all 
our neighbors and with distant nations." 

In closing, he said : 

" I look forward with the greatest anxiety to the day 
when I shall be relieved from responsibilities that at times 
are almost overwhelming, and from which I have scarcely 
had respite since the firing upon Fort Sumter. My ser- 
vices were then tendered and accepted under the first call 
for troops. I did not ask for place or position, and was 
entirely without influence or the acquaintance of persons of 
influence. But I was resolved to perform my part in a 
struggle threatening the very existence of the nation. I 
performed a conscientious duty, without asking promotion 
or command, and without a vengeful feeling toward any 
section or any individual. 

" Notwithstanding this, throughout the war, and from 
my candidacy for my present office in 1868, I have been 
the subject of abuse and slanders scarcely ever equaled in 
political history, which to-day I feel that I can afford to 
disregard, in view of your verdict, which I gratefully 
accept as my vindication." 

His long silence was broken. When it might have 
looked an appeal for mercy, or a bid for votes, he had 
remained silent ; but now, upon his second inaugural day, 
when about to take the office of President for the second 
time, he uttered the plain and simple words of a man who 
had been slandered, who knew he was wronged, and who 
earnestly desired to be set right before the world. Every 
word that he had uttered was perfectly true. He had 
been unselfish ; he had been dispassionate ; and yet he 
had been tortured and calumniated beyond any other 
President in the history of the nation, except Washington 
and Lincoln. And whether in perfect taste or not, this 
reply was a frank and natural outcry of an honorable 
soldier and citizen. 

Immediately upon the assembling of Congress, the cry of 
salary-grabbing arose. The bill for increasing the pay of 
congressmen, senators, judges, and also that of the Presi- 
dent, was introduced into Congress by General Nathaniel 
P, Banks, who had been Grant's bitter political opponent 



Tl 




U. S. Grant at the beginning of his second term as President, age 51 years. 

Prom a photograph by Brady. 



GRANT*S SECOND TERM 42;^ 

during the Presidential canvass, but wished, when all was 
over, to extend the hand of friendship to his old comrade- 
in-arms. This he did by the presentation of the Salary Bill. 
Soon afterward a representative called upon the President, 
and stated that there was no question about raising the 
President's salary, but that there was a division of opinion 
with regard to the other officers of the government. 

To this Grant replied : " If the bill comes to me with a 
proposition increasing my own salary, and leaving out 
that of the cabinet officers, the judge of the Supreme 
Court, and members of Congress, I shall feel called upon 
to veto it." 

This statement, carried back to Congress, had great 
weight. The bill passed, and when it came to the White 
House the President signed it. The bill was called the 
" Salary Grab," and a great deal was made of it by the 
opposition. Perhaps a more sensitive man would have 
vetoed it, but every one of his critics knew that twenty- 
five thousand dollars a year had long been insufficient to 
pay for the expenses of entertaining and maintaining the 
dignity of the Presidential office. Grant's pay as general 
of the army had been almost as much, with expenses very 
considerably less. 

The second cabinet was considered better than the first, 
but there were many changes made. The general still 
maintained the military idea of subordination with regard 
to the members of the cabinet, and when he found any de- 
partment taking undue power to itself, or assuming to be 
the government, he requested the resignation of its head 
without a moment's hesitation. In reply to a journalist 
who asked him why General Cox, his Secretary of the 
Interior, had left the cabinet, he said : " The trouble was 
that General Cox thought the Interior Department was 
the whole government, and that Cox was the Interior 
Department. I had to point out to him in very plain 
language that there were three controlling branches of the 
government, and that I was the head of one of these, and 
would like so to be considered by the Secretary of the 
Interior." 

For these reasons there was almost continual change in 



428 LIFE OF GRANT 

the personnel of his cabinet, Fish, the Secretary of State, 
being almost the only member who remained throughout. 
For him the President retained the highest regard. 

There were several important questions, aside from the 
ever-present Southern problem, which Grant settled with 
apparent wisdom. One of these referred to what was 
called the " inflation of the currency," and though a veto 
of the bill to increase the currency seemed likely to split 
the Republican party, the President vetoed it. It is a 
capital commentary on Grant's rugged sincerity to know 
that he first wrote a message agreeing to the bill, but that, 
upon re-reading with care the arguments he had used, he 
concluded that his deductions were false. He tore up this 
message, and rewrote it entire, reversing his judgment. 
He thus aligned himself with the conservative forces in 
society. Whatever may be thought now of the wisdom 
of his position by reformers, at that time he was com- 
mended for his wise measure by the strongest and most 
conservative thinkers of every State. Probably the more 
advanced thinkers of to-day would say that his position, 
while conservative, was fallacious. 

Everything he did was criticized. Under his adminis- 
tration, and by reason of his vigorous advocacy of im- 
provement, Washington was changing from a squalid 
Southern town with unpaved streets and ramshackle build- 
ings to a city really creditable to the nation. The plans 
drawn long before by a man of genius needed only to be 
carried out to make the city a worthy capital of the nation ; 
but it was claimed that great jobbery and favoritism con- 
nected itself with the work of improvement, and " Boss" 
Sheppard was held to be high in favor with Grant. It was 
believed that Grant must naturally be sharing some ill- 
gotten gains. 

In the spring of his second year his daughter Ellen, a 
girl of nineteen, married a young Englishman, and, to the 
deep grief of her father, went to England to live. He had 
not approved of the engagement at the first, but when it 
became evident that his daughter's happiness depended 
upon the marriage, he consented, though he foresaw the 
long separation which followed. 



grant's second term 429 

The Southern problem seemed to be increasing in diffi- 
culty. At the very hour in which he was reading his 
inaugural address, and alluding to the peaceful condition 
of the country, the people of Louisiana were rioting in the 
streets of New Orleans, and the two factions, one composed 
of the white Democracy of the South, and the other made 
up of the " carpet-bag " element from the North, combined 
with the negro voters, were ranked against each other as 
if for war. This condition continued during 1873-75, and 
the enemies of the President held him responsible for this 
as for other evils. 

The position which the President immediately assumed 
in this affair was precisely that which he had held while 
general of the army. He insisted on the recognition of 
the Kellogg, or " black Republican," government in Loui- 
siana, because, according to all the laws, and by the verdict 
of the r^^turning-board, that party had a majority of the 
votes, and must be sustained. It was not his business to 
pass upon the legality of an enactment. He sternly in- 
sisted that all men should keep the peace, and once, when 
requested to proclaim martial law, he replied : " The whole 
public is tired out with these annual outbreaks in the 
South, and the great majority are ready now to condemn 
any interference on the part of the government. I heartily 
wish that peace and good order may be restored without 
issuing the proclamation, but if the proclamation must be 
issued," — here he uttered his stern word, — " I shall instruct 
the commander of the forces to have no child's play." In 
reality the race war had reached a malignancy very dis- 
couraging to the lovers of peace. The situation demanded 
severe measures. At Vicksburg, as well as in New Orleans, 
in Texas, and in Carolina, the trouble approached open 
warfare. The white citizens of the South, groaning under 
the burden of the " carpet-bag" and " scalawag" govern- 
ment, were determined to throw it off. 

The President recognized the injustices which gave rise 
to this feeling. He said : " I sympathize with you, and I 
will do all in my power to relieve you. You have had 
most trying governments to live under; but can you pro- 
claim yourselves entirely irresponsible for this condition? 



430 LIFE OF GRANT 

While I remain President all the laws of Congress, includ- 
ing the recent amendment, will be enforced with rigor. 
Let there be fairness in the discussion, let the advocates 
of all political parties give honest reports of occurrences, 
condemning the wrong and upholding the right, and soon 
all will be well. Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, 
for such he is and must remain, and politics will be 
divided, not on the color-line, but on principle." 

The President saw that the Southern whites were not to 
be altogether blamed in the premises. Under the lead of 
men who had no permanent interest in the country, igno- 
rant and childish negro legislators had combined to pass 
the most ruinous and scandalous appropriation bills. 
These acts intensified the determination of the white race 
in the South to regain its natural supremacy. It is but 
fair to say that no State in the North would have sub- 
mitted to similar legislation on the part of a class of voters 
so ignorant and so venal. 

Nevertheless, as President Grant had indicated, the 
South could not reasonably complain. They had brought 
the condition on themselves by refusing to recognize the 
civil rights of the negro, and by rejecting the Fourteenth 
Amendment with its necessary and just diminution of 
Southern political power. They knew Grant well enough 
to properly weigh every word which he spoke, and when 
he said, " Henceforth there will be no child's play ; the 
laws will be executed, and the peace will be maintained in 
every street and highway of the United States," the 
malcontents gave up the fight, the reasonable men took 
up the suggestions of the President, and the reign of vio- 
lence ended in the South. 

Meanwhile, as the months of the new second adminis- 
tration dropped away, the cry of imperialism and of Grant- 
ism arose. A large number of people professed to believe 
that Grant was plotting secretly to secure the nomination 
for a third term, and that if he secured the third term, he 
would be able to continue for a fourth term, or for life, 
and possibly to establish himself as dictator. At this dis- 
tance the cry is absurd, but in that fevered and corrupt 
period the fear was not without something to feed upon. 



GRANT'S SECOND TERM 43 1 

Nothing could have been further from Grant's thought 
than the assumption of any power outside of that granted 
to him by the people. He was surrounded, however, by 
a crowd of parasites who had no more sense or patriotism 
than to say, with winks and nods, or even with a gesture 
of the clenched fist, " The old man is the best President 
we ever had ; he 's the greatest man in the nation ; he 's 
the man for the place, and we will keep him there." 

From the obscure hints or open boastings of such men 
the enemies of Grant deduced their inflammatory charges. 
It was always the peculiarity of General Grant to decide 
upon a question only when the moment most proper for 
the decision had arrived. He was too proud to defend 
himself from charges of any kind, and he declined to either 
accept or refuse a nomination for a third term before it 
had been offered to him. He did not care to gratify his 
enemies by taking any account of their furious charges. 
He remained perfectly silent, and no assault of an enemy 
or petition of a friend could draw one word from him, 
either for or against the third term. 

But at last, in the summer of 1875, when, by reason 
of a resolution introduced into the Repubhcan State 
Convention at Philadelphia, the question assumed suffi- 
ciently definite shape so that he could properly reply to 
it, then the President spoke. He called a cabinet meeting 
to consider it. Mrs. Grant happened to be in the room 
at the hour of assembling, and the general was too con- 
siderate of her to ask her to leave the office. As the 
cabinet assembled he became very uneasy for fear she 
might gain an inkling of what was about to be discussed. 
At last she perceived his uneasiness, and left the room, say- 
ing: " Well, if nothing exciting is to take place, I '11 go." 

After she had gone, the general told the cabinet that 
he was about to reply to the chairman of the Pennsyl- 
vania convention, outlining his position. This he did 
after the meeting was over. In this letter he said : 

The idea that any man could elect himself President, or even 
renominate himself, is preposterous. Any man can destroy his 
chances for an office, but no one can force an election or even a 
nomination. I am not, nor have I ever been, a candidate for 



432 LIFE OF GRANT 

renomination. I would not accept the nomination, if it were 
tendered, unless it should come under such circumstances as to 
make it an imperative duty — circumstances not likely to arise. 

This letter he wrote with his own hand, and carried out 
to the postal-box himself; and it was well he did so, for, 
on his return, Mrs. Grant asked him what was going on 
in the cabinet meeting. 

He hesitated a moment, and then replied : " Well, my 
name is being mentioned for a third term, and I 've been 
unable to answer until the nomination was offered ; but 
to-day the question came up in such form that I have 
written a letter against the third term." 

Mrs. Grant was very much excited. " You must not 
send it." 

" But I have sent it." 

"Well, go get it back instantly." 

The general smiled, and said : " No ; it is in the hands 
of Uncle Sam." 

There were those among his implacable enemies who 
professed to believe that this letter was a declination with 
a string to it, but for the most part it was taken to mean 
just what it said, and the fury of opposition was imme- 
diately allayed. It gave instant hope to all the prominent 
leaders of the Republican party, and pipes began to be 
laid in every direction. From being a question of Grant 
himself, it became a question of " Grant's man." The 
question was, " Whom will our Caesar indorse?" 



CHAPTER XLVI 

DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 

AS Congress assembled in the fall of 1875, and the 
±\. President presented his seventh annual message, abuse 
of him had practically died away. He had demonstrated 
his strength and his consistency, and had lived down very 
much of the opposition. His letter defining his position 
on the third term had made the assaults upon him as an 
" ambitious Caesar " of little account, although the fear 
still existed that he felt the people behind him, and might 
go before the country for a third term. 

The country at large was more at peace than had been 
hoped for three years before. The Kuklux had felt the 
strong hand of the Chief Executive, and the Southern 
leaders were beginning to plan another mode of evading 
the negro ballot. Force having been found dangerous 
and ineffectual, they determined now to rule by craft. 
The spirit of physical violence was dying out. For all 
these reasons the annual message of the President dealt 
almost entirely with the money question, with telegraphic 
and railway communication, and with other purely com- 
mercial matters. 

The President stated his belief that the time had come 
for withdrawing federal interference from the Southern 
States, leaving them to work out their political problems 
in their own way. He well knew that force begot force, 
and was eager to announce the moment when the South 
could be completely freed from federal interference, and 
should turn itself unreservedly to upbuilding its industries. 

The message was considered wise and strong. It was 

433 



434 LIFE OF GRANT 

spoken of as the " ablest message he has yet written." 
For the moment the friends of General Grant could 
safely express their admiration of him, and analyze with 
a great deal of just pride his action as President. His 
closing days promised to be peaceful. 

But at the very time that he was writing this message, 
disgrace and despair, like twin vultures, were hovering 
over his head. For nearly three years obscure intimations 
and even open charges of corruption had been made against 
the revenue department, especially in Chicago, St. Louis, 
and Cincinnati. And at last, in the second year of his 
new administration, in response to a demand from every 
well-wisher, he had appointed Benjamin H. Bristow 
Secretary of the Treasury for the set purpose of casting 
out the thieves. But the year passed, and little was done. 
Some months later a friend in St. Louis had written to 
President Grant, detailing the insinuations being made 
by influential critics in that city, not only against officers 
high in the administration, but against the President him- 
self. This letter Grant had turned over in his hand, and 
covered with this vigorous indorsement : 

Referred to the Secretary of the Treasury. ... I forward 
this for the information and to the end that, if it throw any 
light upon new parties to summon as witnesses, they may be 
brought out. Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. 
Be specially vigilant against all who insinuate that they have high 
influence to protect or to protect them. No personal considera- 
tions should stand in the way of performing a public duty. 

There was in this command the same gr'.m challenge 
which ran through his word to Andrew D White. " If 
you find me guilty of any share in a dishonest act, drag 
me forth and expose me," he said then; and so, when 
charged with shielding malefactors, he said : " No per- 
sonal consideration should stand in the way of performing 
a public duty " ; and from that moment the prosecution 
against the thieves had taken on vigor and direction. 

The Congress which listened to his message indicated 
great political changes. It contained a Democratic ma- 
jority. It had admitted to representation one hundred 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 435 

and twelve ex-Confederate officers, who, combined with the 
anti-Grant Republicans, were formidable in power. The 
overjoyed Democrats determined at once upon making the 
most of their opportunities. They appointed committee 
after committee of investigation, with the plain purpose to 
" smell out " frauds, and expose and weaken the adminis- 
tration and the Republican party before the country. They 
made great show of being virtuously indignant at the reign 
of corruption in high circles, whereas, in fact, it was merely 
political warfare. Every committee had an eye to the 
coming Presidential election. 

On the other hand, the leaders of the Republican party 
had long known of these frauds in the revenue depart- 
ment, — as far back, indeed, as the elections of 1872, — but 
had refrained from investigation because the offenders 
were known to be high in the favor of the administration, 
and their prosecution would endanger the party's success. 

Now that the President had uttered his vigorous word, 
and the Democratic Congress threatened exposure anyhow, 
and for the reason, also, that Secretary Bristow saw his 
opportunity to make a name for himself, the prosecution 
went forward with a rush. The trials of certain officials 
came on first in November at St. Louis, and Grant, having 
in mind the possible criticism of the opposition, named 
ex-Senator John B. Henderson (well known as an oppo- 
nent of the administration) as prosecuting attorney. Mr. 
Henderson had voted against the impeachment of Andrew 
Johnson, had failed of reelection to the Senate, and was 
in the mood to push every case to a finish ; and Grant's 
enemies acknowledged that he had forestalled criticism. 

The prosecution had not gone far before it became 
evident that General O. E. Babcock, the President's pri- 
vate secretary, had been on terms of extraordinary intimacy 
with the chief offenders ; also, that Supervisor John A. 
McDonald, one of the men under indictment, was a friend 
of the President, and had been seen often in his company. 
These things the opposition press took up and handled 
freely. 

Incriminating telegrams from General Babcock were 
read before the jury, and published abroad over the land. 



436 LIFE OF GRANT 

Babcock immediately asked the privilege of explaining 
these messages, and, upon being refused, appealed to the 
President for a military court of inquiry. He was an officer 
of the United States army, and his request was entirely 
proper. It was granted. But before it began its sittings, 
the grand jury of St. Louis indicted him as a conspirator 
in the frauds against the government, and summoned him 
to appear at St. Louis and show cause why he should not 
go to jail. 

Grant's enemies were mad with glee ; they were, indeed, 
dazed by their sudden good fortune. The third-term dis- 
cussion was again becoming bitter. Four or five of the 
great papers of the country professed to believe that Grant 
was still plotting to spend his last days in the White House. 
They knew his tenacity of purpose, and their feeling of 
uneasiness, whether genuine or not, was flaming high 
again. Their opposition had assumed the unreason and 
vehemence of monomania. They were wolfishly avid for 
any sort of material which could be used against the 
" dread military dictator." " Grantism still walks abroad," 
they said. 

Ex-Senator Henderson, as one of the most rancorous 
of all the anti-Grant men, well knew the value of every 
stripe laid upon the back of the administration, and in 
speaking before the jury took occasion to reflect with great 
force and directness upon the President himself. After 
detailing the plan of Commissioner Douglass to uncover 
the St. Louis frauds by changing Supervisor McDonald 
to a Pennsylvania district, he repeated the charge that 
Grant, at the request of McDonald (or his friends), had 
personally revoked this order, thus thwarting the investi- 
gation in St. Louis. 

Raising his voice, and speaking with fierce heat, Mr. 
Henderson inquired : " What business had the President 
to interfere with Douglass's order? . . . Why did Doug- 
lass bend the supple hinges of the knee and permit 
any interference by the President? This was Douglass's 
own business, and he stood responsible for it under his 
official oath. He was bound to listen to no dictation 
from the President, Babcock, or any other officer, and 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 437 

it was his duty to see that that order was carried out, or 
resign." 

When the report of this speech reached the press, the 
reading public divided itself into two camps — those who 
commended the boldness of the attorney, and those who 
believed he had gone out of his way to make political 
capital against Grant. Some days later the cabinet unani- 
mously voted to remove Mr. Henderson ; and it was cur- 
rently reported at the time that Grant had exclaimed, in 
roused indignation: "I am not on trial!" Henderson's 
place was filled at once, on Grant's order, by a pronounced 
Democrat, Mr. Broadhead of St. Louis, and the trial pro- 
ceeded. 

This impolitic act of the President and his cabinet opened 
the flood-gates of invective. All that had gone before, in 
way of abuse, was but the babbling of children in com- 
parison with the shrieks of madmen. Open charges of 
thievery were made against the President. It was boldly 
asserted that he had made use of his great office to pile up 
millions of secret wealth. Cartoonists delineated him in 
the act of throttling Justice to save his pet child Babcock. 
Demands for his impeachment were made, and regrets 
were expressed that his great office prevented his imme- 
diate arrest and trial. There were men eager to see him 
stripped of his honors, manacled, and clothed in a convict's 
uniform. The hate expressed in these cartoons and edi- 
torials is almost inconceivable to one who dwells outside 
the insatiate vengeance of political warfare. 

These were terrible days for the hero of Vicksburg and 
the friend of peace. He loved Babcock, and he had trusted 
McDonald and McKee. It seemed impossible that one so 
close to him should be guilty, and he not merely let the 
trials go on — he stood at Bristow's right hand and strength- 
ened him throughout. It was reported that there was 
" great dissension in the cabinet," and that " Bristow would 
go next." Others better informed said: " It is a mistake 
to infer dissension in the cabinet. Its members are united 
and harmonious." In fact. President Grant considered 
Bristow a poHtical enemy, but retained him in office to 
finish his work. 



438 LIFE OF GRANT 

Grant again showed his obstinate purpose never to 
desert a friend under fire by retaining Babcock in his ser- 
vice up to the day of his trial. To have done otherwise 
would have been a confession of belief in his friend's guilt, 
and would have prejudiced the jury against him. 

Few men in the history of the nation ever had such an 
experience as now fell to Grant's lot. Adherents fell away 
on every side. From being one of the strongest he sud- 
denly became one of the weakest public men of his time. 
If he had gone before the people at that moment as candi- 
date for Chief Executive, he would have been defeated by 
his own party. Even his stanchest friends were annoyed 
and irritated beyond measure at his course. He had no 
legal right to employ Babcock as his secretary. He had 
been too much seen in the company of men like McDonald. 
He had not exercised proper care in his selection of officers, 
choosing them because he fancied them personally rather 
than because of their proved public worth. He was too 
unsuspicious and confiding. Shrewd as he was in certain 
directions, he was now seen to have been imposed upon 
throughout. 

McDonald, Joyce, and McKee were convicted and sen- 
tenced to State's prison, and as Babcock's trial came on 
in late January, it became clear that an attempt would be 
made to involve and impeach Grant himself. The trial 
filled the whole nation with apprehension. To find the 
President guilty of even a knowledge of this widely ex- 
tended fraud against the treasury would be not merely a 
national disgrace — it would be a national calamity. And 
yet, with ferocious joy, the leaders of the anti-third-term 
movement seized upon and held high in the light every 
shred of evidence against him. The trial of the secretary 
came to be a trial of the chief, and proceeded in a city 
filled with Grant's enemies. 

With that peculiar, immitigable, almost sullen constancy 
which he displayed on occasion, Grant stood by his friend. 
The virtue might have been a mediaeval one, as a critic said, 
but it was nevertheless a virtue. He walked with the 
accused man down to the crumbling verge of ruin with the 
same courage with which he fought his great battles. If 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 439 

he knew Babcock to be guilty, the courage was none the 
less great. So far as the outside world was concerned, he 
seemed to fear no assault and dreaded no epithet, but he 
grew old under the weight of universal censure, and a 
hunted look came into his face. He had come a long way 
from the halcyon days of 1868, when universal praise bent 
over him like a sunny sky. 

When it was announced that the President himself would 
appear as a witness in Babcock's favor, the excitement 
became painfully intense. It was known that his purpose 
was to shield Babcock and, his enemies said, to vindicate 
himself. His deposition was taken at the White House. 

In answer to inquiry, the President said that he had 
known General Babcock since Vicksburg; that he was at 
present his private secretary ; that his relations with him 
were very confidential ; that he had regarded him as effi- 
cient and faithful ; that his reputation was good ; that 
General Babcock had not, to his knowledge, influenced his 
action with reference to the appointments at St. Louis. 
He did not remember that Babcock ever spoke to him 
concerning any charges against Joyce or McDonald. He 
stated positively that Babcock did not seek in any way to 
influence him with regard to investigation of the whisky 
fraud. 

He had no recollection, he said, of having any talk with 
McDonald on any matter touching his official position or 
business. " He certainly did not intercede with me to 
prevent investigation," he definitely said. 

In answer to a question concerning the order changing 
the supervisors around from one district to another, he 
repHed that, some time before Mr. Bristow came in. Com- 
missioner Douglass expressed the idea, and thought it 
would lead to the discovery of any frauds that might be 
going on. He expressed himself favorable to it at the 
time, but nothing was done until it became evident that 
frauds actually existed. After the order was finally issued, 
strenuous objections were made by prominent public men. 
He resisted the effort to have the order revoked until he 
became convinced that it should be revoked or suspended 
in the interest of detecting frauds that had already been 



440 LIFE OF GRANT 

committed. In a conversation with Supervisor Tutten, 
these things were gone over, and Mr. Tutten said : " If 
the order were revoked, it would be looked upon as a 
triumph by the thieves, and would throw them off their 
guard, and special agents could then make successful raids 
upon the suspected distilleries." 

" This argument was so good," the President continued, 
" that I suspended the order right there, writing the direc- 
tions on a card with a pencil." 

Returning to General Babcock, he said he did not re- 
member that Babcock had spoken to him about the order, 
or exhibited any special interest in it, but he had com- 
plained very bitterly of his treatment after Mr. Hender- 
son's speech in the Avery trial. He stated that no one 
had presumed to approach him to endeavor to prevent the 
trial of the guilty persons from St. Louis or elsewhere, and 
that if there had been any misconduct on the part of 
General Babcock, he would have known it. 

The effect of Grant's testimony was very great. It 
undoubtedly served to acquit General Babcock of com- 
plicity in the frauds. McDonald and his friends claimed 
that the President had perjured himself to save a friend. 
Grant's friends said : " This is impossible. Ulysses Grant is, 
above all else, a truthful man. It is hard for him to dis- 
simulate — impossible for him to lie, even in a case like 
this." Nevertheless, there were those who continued to 
insist that he had committed the most colossal perjury, 
and this belief continued to be reflected in bitter articles 
and cartoons in the opposition press. 

There were more things hidden beneath all this than 
any one man knew. Every office-seeker who had a dif- 
ference with the President, every politician who wished to 
advance his own or a friend's chances for office, every 
leader who envied Grant, and every sensational corre- 
spondent of the metropolitan papers, stood ready to 
connive in the great soldier's downfall. 

All this contention had a singular opportuneness. It 
came just in time to affect the political situation, which 
was as full of passion as in 1864, when the perpetuity of 
the nation seemed to depend upon Lincoln's reelection. 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 44I 

And yet, in spite of the enormous political pressure, in 
spite of a hostile majority in Congress, in spite of the 
malignant desire of the most skilful and designing political 
leaders, paid lawyers, and in spite of the personal enemies 
of the President, not one line of direct evidence ivas ever 
developed zvhich pointed to his complicity in these frauds. 

The bitterest of his critics at last took this stand : " We 
do not believe the President has been in the slightest de- 
gree party to these frauds. On the contrary, he meant 
every word he said in his famous edict, ' Let no guilty 
man escape.' " 

He meant to the full, also, his reply to Secretary Bris- 
tow, who insinuated that he had something to tell, but 
cabinet courtesy forbade. " I beg to relieve you from all 
obligations of secrecy on this subject," Grant immediately 
wrote to Bristow, " and desire not only that you may 
answer all questions relating to it, but that all members 
of my cabinet and ex-members of my cabinet may also 
be called upon to testify in regard to the same matter." 
He flung his gauntlet down in right knightly fashion, and 
challenged inquiry. His life would justify it. There was 
a certain majesty in this defiance of his snarling detractors. 
"Do your worst; tell all you know," he said, in effect, 
and history must record the absolute failure of investiga- 
tion to lay a distinct charge against his name. 

Other troubles quickly followed. Scarcely was the 
acquittal of Babcock made public when Secretary of War 
Belknap, one of the most popular men in public life, was 
indicted for making use of his high position for purposes 
of personal gain. One of the post-traders at Fort Sill, 
upon being brought before an investigation committee, 
testified that he had secured his position through the de- 
ceased wife of Secretary Belknap by the payment of six 
thousand dollars a year, and that he had faitiifully com- 
plied with these conditions, making payment every four 
months ; that he had continued to do so after the death of 
Mrs. Belknap, and that the secretary himself had con- 
tinued to receipt for these payments. 

All this the secretary himself, in the presence of the 
President, admitted to be true. In an agony of shame 



442 LIFE OF GRANT 

and sorrow, he told his chief that he had supposed the 
sums receipted for came from an investment of his wife's 
private income. He begged the privilege of resigning at 
once, in order to save the administration from further dis- 
grace. This was granted, and he went out a private 
civilian, to fall under indictment by a jury. 

The shadow of this disgrace also rested upon Grant. 
As one of his opponents said : " He may himself be en- 
tirely innocent, but his stubborn adherence to his friends 
in disgrace has covered him with a cloud. He has been 
too anxious and too active in his efforts to save his friends. 
He let Williams go only when public sentiment became 
overpowering. He let Delano and Richardson and Cres- 
well go, when he ought to have put them on trial. He 
interfered with the evidence, and saved Babcock, and now 
he accepts the resignation of Belknap as if to save him from 
impeachment. All this has an evil look, and if the Presi- 
dent is suspected of complicity with these men, he has 
himself to blame." 

As over against these insinuations, the friends of Grant 
claimed that he had stood nobly by Secretary Bristow in 
his prosecution; that the evidence had been insufficient 
to convict Babcock even in a hostile city, and that the 
President, being an unsuspicious man of guileless tempera- 
ment, had not perceived the duplicity of men whom he 
trusted ; and as for Belknap, Grant was not the only one 
deceived. The Secretary of War had been one of the 
most popular and trusted men of the party. His disgrace 
could in no wise reach the President. 

The bitter denunciations of Grant for the sins and short- 
comings of his subordinates were so manifestly unfair that 
they could not help being followed by a reaction. It was 
absurd to hold the President personally responsible for 
everything which happened amiss, and it was equally 
absurd to apportion the credit of all wise measures among 
unknown statesmen. In other words, a campaign of abuse, 
which loaded all responsibility upon the Executive and 
denied him all credit, was too bitterly partizan to make 
any permanent impression upon the minds of the people. 

It was pointed out by his friends that Washington had 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 443 

been assailed with even greater bitterness and obloquy ; 
that he had been alternately lashed and lampooned in a 
way incredible at the present day. John Quincy Adams 
was charged with all sorts of crimes, and even Mr. Adams 
stooped to accuse President Jackson of pretending to be 
sick in order to excite sympathy. Jackson and Van Buren, 
according to the newspapers of the time, were the equals 
of Caligula and Nero; Van Buren "a Talleyrand without 
his intellect, or a George III. without his insanity." 

It must be remembered, the friends of the administra- 
tion went on, that President Grant did not begin at the 
beginning of the American government. He began where 
Johnson left off. He was obliged to take up a thoroughly 
demoralized nation, with all the vices and abuses which 
had grown up at the close of a great war under the rule 
of a man whom the people had nearly impeached. He 
found the present bad civil-service system in operation, 
and so bound up with the selfish ambitions of local politi- 
cians that it was impossible to change it. Most of the 
appointments had been made by members of Congress 
who clung to their traditional prerogatives as the only 
means of keeping in office. It was impossible for the 
President to even sign the commissions of the office- 
holders. 

It was a time of speculation, of cupidity, and of corrup- 
tion. Dishonesty was not confined to official circles. The 
war being over, the people had turned their attention to 
making money, and the corruption that was in private life 
had reached in upon and rotted official life. The adminis- 
tration shared the characteristics of the times. 

The faults and the limitations of President Grant were 
obvious. They needed no excuse or palliation, and he 
would be the last man to ask such excuse. He had taken 
high and difficult public trust without previous political 
experience, and very naturally had made mistakes. He 
had been pitted against the keen, shrewd, practised manipu- 
lators of public affairs, and in some cases he had been 
worsted. Leading politicians, angered by his distrust of 
them, had retaliated upon him and his administration. 
But in the main all the great features of his public policy, 



444 LIFE OF GRANT 

and all the measures really vital in the progress of the 
nation, will be remembered and approved by the states- 
manship of the future. The editors whose criticisms are 
most severe, it was urged, will scarcely care to read, even 
ten years hence, the articles they have published in dero- 
gation of Ulysses Grant. 

It was perfectly evident that Grant as a candidate for a 
third term was unpopular, even had these investigations 
been put out of mind. The sentiment of the people was 
powerfully set against his continuance in office, and the 
general himself stood by his letter of the previous summer. 
The time had come when his great military mind was out 
of place and a menace to the nation's peace. 

The interest centered in his candidate. " Whom will 
Grant support?" was the question. Though about to go 
out of ofifice, he was the overshadowing figure in the United 
States, and it was felt that whichever way his interest went 
success would go. Blaine was the most important political 
leader in the field, but he had violent prejudices, and had 
roused destructive antagonisms, and Grant did not believe 
he could be nominated. Bristow the President considered 
to be his secret enemy, and was therefore sternly opposed 
to him. General Sherman early announced himself in 
favor of General Hayes of Ohio, who had been elected 
governor by a very large majority, and who was very 
much spoken of as a candidate. When Grant gave out 
his opinion that General Hayes was a suitable man the 
struggle narrowed down to a contest between Hayes and 
Blaine. Hayes was nominated easily, and Wheeler of 
Indiana was placed second on the ticket. 

The contest which began at once between Hayes and 
Wheeler on the one side, and Tilden of New York and 
Hendricks of Indiana on the other, became exceedingly 
bitter and exciting. The battles of the war and the mea- 
sures of reconstruction were fought all over again, with the 
most acrid and intemperate phraseology. The question of 
federal interference in the South, the Civil Rights Bill, 
charges of illegal voting, and all the other sad accompani- 
ments of reconstruction, came again to the front. 

If the Southern States could be carried for Tilden, he 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 445 

would be elected, and the temptation to intimidation and 
fraud in the South was very great. It was foreseen that 
if the election should be close, it would be disputed. And 
all eyes were turned upon President Grant, as November 
came on, to know what he would do with regard to pre- 
venting violence and wrong in the South, and whether he 
would sustain the Republican candidate if he should receive 
a majority of votes cast. He issued an order to Sherman 
to keep the peace at all cost, and the election passed more 
peaceably than had been anticipated. The trouble began 
after the result was partially known. The election was 
very close, the Democrats claiming a victory. The Re- 
publicans claimed that the Southern States had been car- 
ried by fraud and intimidation, and said that Tilden could 
never legally take his seat in the White House. To this 
the Democrats replied that the South may have been partly 
carried by fraud, but was the Republican party in the 
North free from a like crime? Allowing even for some 
fraudulent votes, it was still clear, they said, that Tilden 
was elected. He should not be cheated of his honors. 
The decision passed to the electoral college. 

Immediately after election, the President telegraphed to 
General Sherman : " No man worthy the office of Presi- 
dent should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed 
there by fraud. Either party can aflford to be disap- 
pointed in the result, but the country cannot afford to 
have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false 
returns." And later, when the election had passed to the 
electoral college, and a dispute arose between the Senate 
and the House with regard to who should count the elec- 
toral ballots, he urged some permanent legislation with 
regard to the matter. And when the Electoral Bill came 
before him, he promptly signed it, saying: 

The bill may not be perfect, but it is calculated to meet the 
present condition of the question and of the country- The 
country is agitated. It needs aid. It desires peace and quiet, 
and harmony between all parties and all sections. Its industries 
are arrested, labor unemployed, capital idle, and enterprise para- 
lyzed, by reason of the doubt and anxiety attending the uncer- 
tainty of a double claim to the Chief Magistracy of the nation. 



446 LIFE OF GRANT 

It wants to be assured that the result of the election will be 
accepted without resistance from the supporters of the disap- 
pointed candidate, and that its highest officer shall not hold his 
place with a questioned title of right. Believing that the bill 
will secure these ends, I give it my signature. 

His whole attitude in this matter was so fine that it 
secured the commendation of the reasonable on both sides. 
He let it be known privately that whoever was constitu- 
tionally elected would be seated ; and whatever his critics 
might think of him in other regards, they knew him to be 
a man of his word. He was in fact as in name the com- 
mander of the army and navy. At the same time, he 
hesitated to use the military. Only when the prevention 
of actual bloodshed demanded it, and when called upon 
by the governors of the States, did he order troops to the 
scenes of disorder. 

His final days were, however, days of almost martial 
action. His firm hand was kept constantly upon the war 
department. Troops were shifted, arsenals were guarded, 
malcontents were watched, and every precaution was 
taken to prevent the fire-eaters of either side from actual 
violence. With an irresolute man or an insincere man in 
his place, trouble would have resulted. But the country 
knew Grant. He was still the captain. His action 
throughout this period did much to redeem the disrepute 
into which his administration had fallen. 

He had announced that he would hold his place until 
his successor was duly and properly inaugurated. This 
was to cover the space between the 4th of March, which 
fell on Sunday, and the public inauguration on Monday. 
He was present on Saturday, when the new Executive 
privately took the oath of office, and he rode in the same 
carriage with General Hayes, and was by his side when 
the oath of office was publicly administered. By this 
action he warned all disturbers that President-elect Hayes 
was to take his seat. Protest must take the forms of law. 
He did not intend to have two governments, or any South 
American pronunciamentos. He was profoundly grateful 
when the ceremony ended in peace. 

The administration of President Grant closed in shadow; 




U. S. Grant, age 54 years. 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 447 

there is no evading that. If he had sought vindication at 
the polls, it would have been denied to him. His adminis- 
tration had not met expectations, but that is no profound 
argument against it. It is probable that no rule by any 
man, however just, could have more nearly satisfied or 
unified the warring elements of that time. 

The criticisms against it which remained valid after the 
passions of that day had cooled are these: It was semi- 
military in character. It was a personal government. 
Though not intended by Grant himself, his cabinet was 
continually changing, and the country was continually 
irritated by reports of disagreement between the Chief 
Executive and his advisers. Beginning in confusion, the 
cabinet continued through turmoil, and ended in dishonor. 
No one can tell whether this might not have happened to 
any other President, but there it stands, a condition to be 
apologized for. His conception of his cabinet as aides 
was purely military, but changed somewhat toward the 
last, though he never found himself able to tolerate men 
whom he knew to be conniving within his official family 
for their own personal aggrandizement, or, indeed, those 
whom he personally disliked. 

In the executive department he considered himself 
supreme, and yet believed that he and all other executive 
officers were not concerned with law-making. They were 
all servants alike of the government, pledged not to ques- 
tion, but to execute, the will of the people. 

Had he begun by attempting to unify the political 
factions of his party, by choosing to office men whose 
ability and character had already secured for them high 
place as leaders and statesmen, he might have avoided a 
part of the strife which followed. But he did not. He 
distrusted politicians, and determined that his should be a 
government by men of character and integrity rather than 
of political captains. He selected men whom he person- 
ally admired, and whom he cared to have meet with him 
in daily intercourse. Thus he alienated at the start men 
like Sumner, Seward, Schurz, Dana, and Blaine, a:id a 
large part of his troubles sprang from the jealousy and 
anger and arrogance of these men, who believed them- 



448 LIFE OF GRANT 

selves his superiors in intelligence and political fore- 
sight. 

Thus, his selections being personal, the dishonesty of 
men like Belknap reflected upon him directly. He took 
men from obscure positions, and was answerable to the 
public for his choice in immensely larger measure than he 
would have been in selecting men like Sumner and Seward, 
for whom the public, in a sense, stood warranty. This, it 
will be seen, was a political departure on his side, and, 
while apparently the common-sense and reasonable posi- 
tion for him to take, resulted in trouble and in dishonor. 
Whether he would have escaped trouble and dishonor 
by honoring Sumner and his like must forever remain a 
question. 

The shadow which streams from the charges brought 
against Babcock, Belknap, Schenck, and others high in 
the administration will probably remain the principal blot 
upon Grant's administration. 

It is now seen that he was largely right. He was right 
on the reconstruction question, which was, after all, the 
principal work which he had set himself to do. He was 
right on civil-service reform. He was right on the Indian 
question, and the policy which he inaugurated continues 
side by side with civil service. He was right in the matter 
of governmental economy, in the reduction of taxation, 
and in his encouragement to industry. He was right in 
his intention with regard to the improvement of the District 
of Columbia, believing that Washington was to be one of 
the favorite winter cities of the nation. He was right on 
financial questions. Although his position with regard 
to the demonetization of silver may be questioned by 
some, his opposition to inflation is to-day upheld. Whether 
he was right upon the Santo Domingo question is not yet 
settled ; but this much is certain : his intentions were high 
and his position unselfish. He was right in his course 
toward Mexico and toward England ; and if his sugges- 
tions with regard to Cuba had been carried out, that long- 
suffering island might long since have been at peace. 

Therefore, in view of all these questions upon which his 
position was, at least, without self-seeking and based upon 



DAYS OF GREAT TRIALS 449 

justice, it may be that the Grant administrations will finally 
appear to have been right upon all vital questions, and that 
they failed only upon matters which are now seen to be of 
minor importance. For the frauds in the Indian depart- 
ment or in the revenue department were actually of 
small account compared with the fundamental problem of 
reconstruction which filled his mind, and upon which he 
always acted promptly, yet dispassionately, with unfailing 
regard for law and justice. 



CHAPTER XLVII 

GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD* 

NOTWITHSTANDING all charges against him, 
Ulysses Grant left the White House without any- 
considerable sum of money. He had a house in Galena, 
and Mrs. Grant had a house in Washington ; he owned, 
also, the Gravois farm, and some land in Chicago. But 
neither of these three properties paid any considerable 
dividend ; in fact, it is stated by John Russell Young that 
the ex- President had nothing at the close of his adminis- 
tration except the houses which had been given him while 
general of the army. The money paid to him as President 
was spent in maintaining the dignity and hospitality of his 
great office. 

He was now a private citizen, general only by courtesy. 
In a single hour he had stepped from the cares, the tumults, 
the responsibilities of the head of the nation, to the silence 
and peace and leisure of private life, carrying with him 
the hundreds of friends whom he had raised to honor and 
reward in public service. They were naturally averse to 
this retirement, and began at once to hint that the " old 
commander " would have the third term yet. For the 
most part, however, even the anti-Grant forces considered 
him out of politics, and their clamor against him ceased 
as suddenly as it had begun. 

Indeed, an appreciable reaction in public sentiment set 
in, and receptions, dinners, and cordial street greeting met 

* This chapter is based upon the English and American newspaper reports 
of the day, and also (by permission) upon John Russell Young's book, 
"Around the World with Grant." 

450 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 45 1 

the ex-President wherever he went. This became so 
markedly spontaneous and genuine that he exclaimed to 
a friend : " Why, it is just as it was immediately after the 
war!" — thus revealing his direct and grateful pleasure in 
the return of good will toward him. He was like a boy 
released from school on a Saturday in June. Since the 
firing on Fort Sumter he had not before enjoyed a single 
day's complete release from absorbing daily duties. For 
sixteen years he had borne constantly increasing responsi- 
bility. Now he had time to play. 

He began at once to prepare for a trip abroad. He had 
promised himself this trip some years before, and now it 
was possible. He sold part of his stock, sent some of it 
to the country, converted some of his goods into cash, and 
put his affairs in order. His son Ulysses, not long out of 
Harvard, had entered upon a business career, and to him 
he intrusted his interests during his absence. Jesse, the 
third son, was to accompany his parents abroad. Nellie, 
the daughter, was married, and was living in England. 
According to good authority. Grant had not more than 
twenty-five thousand dollars with which to make the trip, 
and with this amount he had three and sometimes four 
persons to provide quarters for. The length of his trip, 
he smilingly said, depended on how long this money held 
out. 

After several days of almost oppressive honors and 
courtesies on the part of the city of Philadelphia, the 
Grant party sailed (about the middle of May) for Liver- 
pool. Immense crowds of friends waved him good-by 
from the wharves and from the troops of boats which 
accompanied him down the bay. The general proved to 
be as imperturbable at sea as he had been on the battle- 
field. He defied the elements, and enjoyed every hour of 
the voyage. Those who were with him saw the lines of 
care smooth out of his face. It was, indeed, his most 
peaceful period since the quiet days in the Galena store. 

On the eleventh day the vessel touched at Liverpool. 
The cable had prepared the people for the arrival of the 
great American, and a throng as immense as that which 
bid him God-speed at Philadelphia filled the wharves and 



452 LIFE OF GRANT 

Streets to welcome him to England. The mayor met him, 
formally presenting the freedom of the city, and assuring 
him of the high regard in which he was held by the Eng- 
lish people. 

The general was very naturally amazed. He had started 
on his journey as a private citizen, and had no expectation 
of any popular or civic demonstration whatsoever. No 
preparations had been made for it. The state department 
had merely given him a letter which called the attention 
of the republic's representatives abroad to his visit, and 
requested them to give him every attention and considera- 
tion. No step beyond this had been taken to make his 
visit in any sense official. Yet ten thousand English citi- 
zens of the middle condition crowded into the custom- 
house at Liverpool, eager to shake his hand. 

At Manchester he was made the guest of the city, and 
lodged in the town hall, which had never before been used 
for a similar purpose. Here, as in Liverpool, he was pre- 
sented with the freedom of the city, and every possible 
attention which could show him peculiar regard followed. 
The people crowded to see him almost as if he were their 
own sovereign ; and, to the surprise of the people at home, 
the general replied to these greetings, and spoke well at 
almost every one of the great meetings which followed. 

He disclaimed these high honors. " I know this recep- 
tion is intended more for my country than for myself," 
he said again and again. His journey across the country 
toward London was filled with scenes like those which 
took place when he made his first trip to Chicago after 
the surrender at Appomattox. However, up to the time 
he entered London, not a single titled individual met him, 
and the great dailies were cold and indifferent. The great 
demonstrations at Liverpool and Manchester were entirely 
among the mercantile and working classes, and unques- 
tionably were a revelation to the London press of General 
Grant's power, as well as to the arrogant folk who stood 
afar off and waited for him to appear. 

It mattered little whether General Grant as ex-President 
should socially precede dukes or not, but it did matter 
that the great heart of England's citizenry went out toward 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 453 

him as the representative of principles which were to bind 
the English-speaking race closer together. Doubtless 
much of idle curiosity moved the people in thus coming 
to look upon the great warrior, but there was, after all, 
a solid residuum of understanding admiration. 

Meanwhile, in London, Adam Badeau and Minister 
Pierrepont were arguing the question of his social prece- 
dence with solemn fervor — to some little success, for it 
was decided that the government should receive him as 
an ex-sovereign, though the Prince of Wales had deter- 
mined that birth and the divine right of descent should 
not in any social way be weakened by the coming of the 
great commoner. 

A considerable crowd of nameless citizens met General 
Grant as he entered London. He was received by Minister 
Pierrepont, on the part of the United States, and the papers 
stated in obscure paragraphs that General Grant had ar- 
rived. No time was lost in making use of the general's 
spare moments. He was formally introduced to the 
Prince of Wales the morning after his arrival in the city, 
and on the evening of the same day he dined with the 
Duke of Wellington, son of the famous Iron Duke of 
Waterloo. 

Day by day the newspapers gave some slight attentioii 
to his doings ; indeed, their interest grew, and not many 
days after his arrival, and just before the city took official 
action, editorials of greater or less degree of fervency 
appeared, stating the claims which General Grant had 
upon the people of England. They were, on the whole, 
just and well-considered. 

On the evening of the 5th of June Minister Pierrepont 
gave him a reception, which was crowded with notable fig- 
ures in English society, and formal dinners and social func- 
tions came on swiftly. In these receptions the general was 
placed in most trying positions. He was not only among 
absolute strangers, but he was among a people whose 
habits were widely different from his own, some of whom 
were rudely censorious. He was here brought in personal 
contact with personages in wigs, with titled dowagers in 
trailing robes, with multitudinous youths in uniforms, and 



454 LIFE OF GRANT 

with blase, insolent fops, who stared at him with glassy- 
eyes as thougli he were a performing bear. 

Forms were minute and intricate. And yet he made 
a goodly figure through it all. His plain black dress, 
without ornament of any kind, had a certain distinction, 
and a powerful simplicity was in his sturdy presence. He 
was not graceful ; he was not courtly of speech ; but to 
all who came he was unembarrassed, absolutely self-con- 
tained, and masterful. Every one remarked on his dignity 
and his good looks. " Surrounded by fine specimens of 
English manhood though he was, his robust form and rosy 
face were conspicuous for their healthy qualities." " He 
looks like a soldier," said one guest; and another replied: 
" He is undoubtedly the greatest warrior of his age." 
Many regrets were expressed because he did not wear his 
uniform ; it would have been a pleasure to see him wear- 
ing a uniform which no other man was entitled to wear. 

They were worth while, these receptions, for they 
brought him in contact with the real kings of England, 
that is to say, its men of science, literature, statecraft, art, 
and law. He met, also, the great representative figures 
from the ranks of the toilers. He saw England from top 
to bottom. 

On the 15th of June the freedom of the city, the highest 
honor within the gift of the corporation of London, was 
conferred upon him. The ceremonies, which were very 
imposing, took place in Guildhall, one of the oldest struc- 
tures in the city. Eight hundred guests were invited to 
the banquet, and General Grant sat on the left hand of 
the lord mayor. 

In his address his Honor modestly said: "You must 
bear with us, general, if we make much of an ex-President 
of the great republic of the New World visiting the home 
of his fathers." He spoke of Grant's great deeds as a 
soldier, but passed on to emphasize with equal force his 
high career as President. He ended by presenting Gen- 
eral Grant, in the name of the honorable court, the right 
hand of fellowship as a citizen of London. 

The general's reply was very modest and very apt. He 
expressed his surprise at his reception. It was entirely 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 455 

unexpected, and peculiarly gratifying. He again dis- 
claimed the honor, however, believing that it was intended 
quite as much for America as for himself, and again said: 
" I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have 
never advocated it, except as a means for peace." 

A little later in the day, the lord mayor having pro- 
posed General Grant's health, the general felicitously re- 
plied : "My Lord Mayor, ladies, and gentlemen: Habits 
formed in early life and early education press upon us as 
we grow older. I was brought up a soldier, not to talking. 
I am not aware that I ever fought two battles on the same 
day and in the same place, and that I should be called 
upon to make two speeches on the same day under the 
same roof is beyond my understanding. What I do 
understand is that I am much indebted to all of you for 
the compliment you have paid me." 

As a matter of fact, General Grant was rapidly becom- 
ing a ready speaker. He spoke as often as three times a 
day, and seemed to have no secrets. He dined with 
newspaper men, and talked to them with the utmost 
freedom, whereat the American journals were much 
amazed. 

One honor followed another. All that England could 
do to show its regard for General Grant and America was 
done. Thousands of invitations from the stateliest homes 
in London showered upon him. He dined with the Prince 
of Wales at Marlborough House, and late in June was 
invited by the queen to proceed to Windsor Castle and 
spend the night ; and not many days thereafter he received 
a deputation of the working-men of London and the pro- 
vinces, who brought an address of welcome to him. In 
reply, the general said, with deep significance : 

" I have received attentions, and have had invitations, 
free hand-shakings, and presentations from different classes 
of people, and from the government, and from the con- 
trolling element of cities ; but there is no reception I am 
prouder of than this one to-day " ; and there was a forth- 
right sincerity in his voice which carried conviction. The 
English nobility were unimportant in the face of the Eng- 
lish people. 



456 LIFE OF GRANT 

He left for the Continent early in July, visiting Brussels, 
Baden, and the Black Forest, thence going to Lucerne, In- 
terlaken, and Bern, and arriving at Geneva late in July. He 
returned to Edinburgh on the 31st of August, where the 
freedom of that city was presented to him. He made a 
tour through Scotland, being everywhere received with 
the same honor as in England. He returned to London 
by way of Newcastle, Sunderland, Warwick, and other 
places of historic interest. 

It became evident to certain of the American papers 
that they had miscalculated. Grant was something more 
than a mere ex-President, to sink (as many of the ex-Presi- 
dents had done) into feebleness and obscurity. With all 
his faults, he was a great man, one of the predominant 
figures in American history. The meeting at Liverpool, 
the ovation which followed almost immediately at Man- 
chester, and the London receptions, opened the eyes of 
his critics, and many of the journals which had spent 
much of their time reviling him as President now expe- 
rienced a change of heart. They filled long editorial col- 
umns with spread-eagle gratulations over these old-world 
demonstrations. General Grant represented the power 
of the American nation, these editors stated, and the 
honors he was receiving were gratifying to all America, 
as well as to the personal friends of the great commander. 

But the English people not only recognized him as a 
representative of the American people, and one of the 
great commanders of the world : they honored him also as 
a statesman. They by no means slurred over his adminis- 
trations. It has been well said that the judgments of a 
foreign nation resemble the judgments of posterity, and 
the men across the ocean perceived, as most Americans 
could not, the essential singleness, greatness, and sincerity 
of Grant's rule. He stood for peace at home and abroad ; 
he stood for arbitration, for universal justice and fraternity ; 
and this the English people knew. The petty things, the 
local jealousies, the envies and assaults which were so large 
in the eyes of American political critics, and which were 
exaggerated by means of newspaper scare-heads into na- 
tional importance in the States, did not reach so far as the 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 457 

Old World. They became of small account when the keen 
winds of the broad sea touched them. Thus the great 
minds of England and Europe got proper historical per- 
spective on Grant and his deeds. 

But even this did not explain the immense enthusiasm 
of the people of Manchester and Edinburgh. To these 
people of the working and mercantile classes of Great 
Britain, General Grant was something more even than a 
soldier and statesman. He stood to them as the greatest 
example of democratic attainment of his time. Unaided 
and alone, he had climbed from the humble position of one 
who labored in the field and toiled as clerk in a leather- 
store to a command surpassing that of Wellington or 
Napoleon. With birth all against him, without money 
and without influential kinsfolk, he had demonstrated that 
it was possible for a working-man in America to become 
the equal of the greatest sovereigns of the world. He 
embodied, therefore, the natural desire for freedom and 
honor of every ambitious man of working condition. He 
expressed their secret or avowed belief in the falsity and 
injustice of class and privilege, and the sham of " divine 
right." 

For these reasons they crowded to see him, these bluff 
merchants, pale mechanics, and sturdy farmers, as he 
passed on his way to London, the home of the nobility. 

Of such significance was the meeting at Newcastle. In 
the local newspaper of that day twenty columns were de- 
voted to a report of the meeting. " Not for many years 
has the grass of the town moor been covered by so vast 
an assembly as that gathered to receive General Grant." 

This mighty demonstration resembled a revolutionary 
convention. The proposal that the laboring-men should 
do honor to General Grant came from Mr. Burt, Member 
of Parliament, and the Trades Council heartily took up 
the suggestion. The order for assembling went out to the 
working-men of every condition, and they rose from 
the earth like an army. They came from all parts of the 
northern country. Thousands of pitmen climbed out of 
the mines of Durham, Hepworth, and Ravensworth col- 
lieries, and joined the Northumberland miners, the New- 



458 LIFE OF GRANT 

castle dock laborers and trimmers, and all the mechanics, 
machinists, clerks, and working-men of Newcastle. It 
seemed that eighty thousand men had place in this great 
assembly. 

The Member of Parliament made the address of wel- 
come, and the general replied in one of the best speeches 
of his life. He was profoundly moved. He spoke of the 
dignity of labor, and recalled the fact that when wars come 
they fall upon the many — the producing class. " I was 
always a man of peace," he said, " and I have always 
advocated peace, though educated a soldier. I never 
willingly, of my own accord, advocated war." He spoke 
of the friendly relations existing between the two nations, 
and said that it had been the sincere hope of his official 
life to maintain that friendship ; and the tremendous roar 
of his audience showed their unity of agreement. 

In this wise he was described : 

" He looked as much like an ordinary Tyne-side skip- 
per as possible, — open-browed, firm-faced, bluff, honest, 
and unassuming, — and everybody at once settled in his 
own mind that the general would do. The cheers became 
warmer and warmer as that quiet, strong, thoroughly 
British face grew upon them ; and as the applause in- 
creased in power. General Grant, who had at first merely 
touched his hat to the multitude, bared his head in 
acknowledgment of the majestic welcome. 

" While the general was speaking, the vast concourse, 
mustering at least eighty thousand, interpreted the speech 
which they could not hear after their own thoughts, and 
applauded now and again with might and main. When 
the general finished, everybody who had not yet shouted 
felt it incumbent to begin at once ; and those who had 
bellowed themselves hoarse made themselves still hoarser. 
And right in the center of the crowd, little shining rivulets 
glistening on his ebony face, his face glowing with intense 
excitement, the whole soul within him shining out as 
through a dark curtain, stood a negro, devouring the 
general with a gaze of fervid admiration and respect and 
gratitude, which flashed out the secret of the great liber- 
ator's popularity." 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 459 

In Leamington, at a similar meeting, the general said : 
" Although it has been my misfortune to have been en- 
gaged in as many battles as it was possible for an American 
soldier of my generation, I have never been for war." At 
Birmingham, on the loth of October, he addressed the 
working-men, glorifying labor, and celebrating the democ- 
racy of America. On the same day he addressed the 
International Arbitration Union, and again glorified 
peace. 

The speaker of the evening eloquently praised Grant 
for his treatment of the Indians, and for his attitude 
toward the freedmen. " You guided them in their falter- 
ing steps as they marched out of bondage ; you defended 
them from their enemies ; you cared for them in their dis- 
tresses ; you aided them in obtaining education ; and you 
claimed for them the rights of citizens," the speaker said, 
facing the general, and ended by invoking blessings and 
honor upon him. 

To this Grant replied : " I have long been an advocate 
of the cause you represent. I would gladly see the mil- 
lions of men in arms who are now supported by the in- 
dustry of nations return to industrial pursuits and thus 
become self-sustaining, and so take ofT the tax upon labor 
which is now levied for their support." And in another 
speech he replied to the complimentary allusion of some 
.speaker to his peaceful retirement of the great army at 
the close of the American war by saying: " I disclaim all 
praise and credit for that one thing. If the speaker had 
ever been in my position for four years, and had under- 
gone all the anxiety and care I had in the management of 
those large armies, he would appreciate how happy I was 
to be able to say they could be dispensed with." 

On the 24th of October he made a trip to Paris. His 
reception there was not so cordial as in England, for the 
reason, perhaps, that his stern opposition to the French in 
Mexico had been misunderstood, and also because of his 
letter of congratulation to the German government at 
the close of the Franco-Prussian War. Victor Hugo had 
expressed the bitterest feeling against him in a poem, 
soon after his letter; and yet at bottom these two great 



460 LIFE OF GRANT 

ones were in complete accord in their hatred of tyranny 
and their love of freedom and democracy. Grant repre- 
sented the exact opposite of the Napoleonic ideas of war, 
glory, and conquest. Moreover, a large part of the French 
nation was not democratic, but monarchical, in sentiment, 
and naturally that party made no concealment of its dis- 
like of General Grant. 

He was received with the utmost cordiality by Gam- 
betta, and by President MacMahon, who wished to show 
General Grant his armies. This the general politely re- 
fused. He had a powerful aversion to any military review, 
he explained, and wished to escape every reminder of war. 
He permitted himself, however, to receive such social 
attentions from the Americans and the French as they 
cared to give. He met Gambetta most informally, and 
was profoundly impressed by him. He spent several 
weeks in the American colony, and left early in December 
for Italy, Egypt, and the Holy Land. 

Christmas dinner was eaten on the war-ship Vandalia, 
off Palermo. In Egypt the khedive placed his own vessel 
at the general's command, and a trip up the Nile occupied 
some weeks of January. After visiting the Holy Land, 
he returned to Paris by way of Florence, Milan, and 
Rome, and was everywhere the recipient of great honors. 
Throngs of people shook his hand and said complimentary 
things to him, all of which he bore in his patient, wordless 
way. His silence amazed and awed his guests. 

He reentered Paris in May, and being a very much 
overworked man, concluded to seek relief among the easy- 
going Dutch. He was quite to the taste of the m.en of 
Holland by reason of his quiet manner and few words. 
He passed to Berlin late in June. Next to London, Berlin 
interested him more than any other capital city of the Old 
World. He was profoundly eager to study Germany. 
He knew the mighty force of the German people. As 
Victor Hugo said, " Germany is not merely a nation : she 
is the well of nations." Not only that, but Germany 
possessed two men in whom General Grant had a peculiar 
interest — the emperor, and his great chancellor. Prince 
Bismarck. 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 461 

True, it was a military nation, and of things warlike 
General Grant did not approve. The moment he entered 
Germany's boundaries he became aware of its enormous 
military strength. Uniforms were everywhere; military 
organizations existed in every village ; and Von Moltke, 
the great Dane who had thrown his fortunes with the 
German army so many years before, held these terrible 
forces in his hand. Him, too, the general was eager to meet. 

Bayard Taylor, minister to Berlin at that time, came 
courteously down the road to meet General Grant and his 
party and conduct them into the city. At the earliest 
moment the general called upon the great chancellor, who 
was at this time very much engaged with a session of the 
Berlin Congress. The meeting took place in the building 
called the Bismarck Palace. Bismarck met the general 
with both hands extended, his face eager and full of the 
light of welcome. It was perfectly evident that he was 
not merely curious to see General Grant, but eager to 
make his acquaintance and to show his admiration and 
esteem. He was in uniform, and looked old and care- 
worn, his hair and mustache being quite white. 

After a few moments of complimentary greeting, he 
expressed surprise at finding Grant so young a man. To 
this the general replied smilingly that he was at that period 
of life where no higher compliment could be paid him 
than that of being called a young man. 

Bismarck spoke in the tenderest way of the old emperor, 
upon whom an attempt at assassination had just been 
made, which prevented him from seeing General Grant. 

The general shortly afterward remarked, with a smile, 
that he had accepted an invitation from the crown prince 
to witness a review, and then said : " The truth is, I am 
more of a farmer than a soldier. I take little or no interest 
in military affairs. I never went into the army without 
regret, and never retired without pleasure." 

The prince spoke then of America's happy lot in that 
she need fear no war, and added : " What always seemed 
so sad to me about your last great war was that you were 
fighting your own people. That is always so terrible in 
war — so very hard." 



462 LIFE OF GRANT 

" But it had to be done," said the general. 

"Yes; you had to save the Union, just as we had to 
save Germany." 

" Not only to save the Union, but to destroy slavery," 
answered Grant. 

" I suppose, however, the Union was the real sentiment, 
the dominant sentiment." 

" In the beginning, yes ; but as soon as slavery fired 
upon the flag, we all felt — even those v/ho did not object 
to slaves — that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that 
it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought 
and sold like cattle. . . . There had to be an end to sla- 
very. We were fighting an enemy with whom we could 
not make peace. We had to destroy him. No conven- 
tion, no treaty, was possible; only destruction." 

As the general rose to go, he expressed his pleasure at 
having met a man so well known and so highly esteemed 
in America. 

In answer, Bismarck replied : " General, the pleasure and 
the honor are mine " ; and after shaking hands, General 
Grant passed into the square, the guard presented arms, 
he saluted, and strolled slowly back to his hotel. 

He left Berlin soon after, visiting Denmark, Norway, 
and Sweden. He spent the Fourth of July in Hamburg, 
and in response to a toast at a dinner given by the Ameri- 
can consul a day or two later, the general said: " I must 
dissent from one remark of our consul to the effect that I 
saved the country during the recent war. ... If I had 
never held command, if I had fallen, if all our generals 
had fallen, there were ten thousand behind us who would 
have done our work just as well. . . . What saved the 
Union was the coming forward of the young men of the 
nation. . . . The humblest soldier who carried a musket 
is entitled to as much credit for the results of war as those 
who were in command." 

At the close of July the general's party visited St. 
Petersburg. He was met at once by the emperor's aide- 
de-camp. Prince GortchakofT, with kind messages from 
the emperor; and on the next day his Imperial Highness 
Alexander and General Grant met. 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 463 

The emperor was exceedingly cordial. He was very 
much interested in the native races of America, and with 
American methods of Indian warfare. At the close of 
the interview he said : " Since the foundation of your 
government, relations between Russia and America have 
been of the friendliest character, and as long as I live 
nothing shall be spared to continue this friendship." 

To this the general quietly replied : " Although the two 
governments are very opposite in their character, the great 
majority of the American people are in sympathy with 
Russia, and I hope this good feeling will long continue." 

From St. Petersburg the general visited Moscow, where 
he spent several pleasant days, passing on to Warsaw. 
His next stop was in Vienna. After a tour in Austria and 
France, the party took a short turn through Spain. 

In Spain the general was received as a captain-general 
of the Spanish army. The question of how to receive him 
had been a source of tribulation to most European cabi- 
nets, but Spain avoided embarrassing situations by receiv- 
ing him as a great commander. Here he met Serior 
Castelar, the ex-President of Spain, " the one man whom 
he really wished to see." He had an interview with the 
king, who was at that time a melancholy young man of 
about twenty. " The reception was stately and grave," 
but of little significance. 

In Portugal he had a long conversation with the king 
concerning the relations between the United States and 
Portugal, and they parted on exceedingly good terms, the 
king asking leave to present the general with the grand 
cross of the Tower and Sword. This the general refused, 
saying there was a law against officials accepting decoration 
in his country, and he would rather, although no longer 
in office, respect a law which it had been his duty to 
administer. 

After visiting Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz, he returned to 
Paris and to England. From England he visited Ireland, 
being received with great honor in Dublin, where he was 
presented with the freedom of the city. The parchment 
was contained in a very elaborate bog-oak casket. In 
reply he said : " I am by birth a citizen of a country where 



464 LIFE OF GRANT 

there are more Irishmen, either native-born or the de- 
scendents of Irishmen, than there are in all Ireland. I 
have, therefore, had the honor and the pleasure of repre- 
senting more Irishmen and their descendants than the 
Queen of England." 

At Belfast enormous crowds of people greeted him, 
and at other places he was loudly cheered, and thousands 
surrounded his car with the hope of being able to shake 
him by the hand. He returned to London, and on the 
24th of January started on his way for India. 

His party now consisted of himself and wife, his son, 
Colonel Grant, Mr. Borie, formerly Secretary of the Navy, 
Dr. Keating of Philadelphia, and John Russell Young. 
His son Jesse had returned to America. The general 
had been able unexpectedly to extend his vacation. Some 
fortunate investments made by his son Ulysses had placed 
at his disposal enough ready money to enable him to plan a 
trip to the East, which would complete the circuit of the 
globe. In letters to his family and to his friends he began 
to express a growing uneasiness with regard to how he 
should make a living after his play-spell was over, and to 
these letters his friends replied in covert terms, saying: 
" The people of the United States will see that you have 
employment." 

As a matter of fact, his political friends in the United 
States were planning a great political coup. It was their 
design to keep him abroad two years longer, and that he 
should return just before the midsummer convention of 
1880. They counted upon an immense enthusiasm for 
him upon h s return, loaded with honors from European 
peoples and rulers, and believed that his name would again 
sweep the convention like a whirlwind. 

Whether the general realized anything of this at this 
time or not, he yielded nothing, but planned his outing 
without the slightest regard to political warfare. 

In his letters of this time he speaks as one with a divided 
mind. He was homesick, and yet had no home to go to. 
He wished to return, and he did not. He was eager to 
see the East, and he was eager, at the same time, to return 
to his own people. 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 465 

In a letter written to Mr. Washburne from Paris, in 
late December, 1878, he spoke of his determination to go 
home by way of India, China, and Japan, and said that he 
might be expected to reach Philadelphia in midsummer: 

I shall want to remain on the Pacific coast six weeks or two 
months. I spent two years there in early life, and always felt a 
great desire to make it my future home. 

He then adds this curious observation: 

Nothing ever fell over me like a wet blanket so much as 
my promotion to the lieutenant-generalcy. As junior major- 
general in the regular army I thought my chances good for 
being placed in command of the Pacific Division when the war 
closed. As lieutenant-general all hope of that kind vanished.* 

In a letter written from Singapore, early in April, he 
said : 

Since my last letter to you I have seen much of the world new 
to me and but little visited by our countrymen. The reality is 
different from my anticipation. . . . My idea had been rather 
that English rule in this part of the globe was purely selfish. . . , 
I will not say that I was all wrong, but I do say that Englishmen 
are wise enough to know that the more prosperous they can 
make the subject, the greater consumer he will become, the 
greater will be the commerce between the home government and 
the colony, and the greater the contentment of the governed. 

The weather is getting very warm, and we must expect a good 
deal of it before we get to a cool climate. In a few days we 
start for Siam, and return here to take steamer for Hongkong. 
I shall then visit Chinese ports as far north as Shanghai, and pos- 
sibly go to Peking before visiting Japan. It looks now as if we 
would reach San Francisco as early as August. 

He ends with this singular expression of uncertainty, 
singular when it is recalled that he was receiving all the 
honors of an ex-sovereign : 

I am both homesick and dread going home. I have no home, 
but must establish one after I get back, I do not know where. 

* From " Letters to a Friend." 



466 LIFE OF GRANT 

In a letter a month later he writes from Hong Kong, 
saying : 

This is really the most beautiful place I have yet seen in the 
East. The city is admirably built, and the scenery most pictur- 
esque. 

Japan pleased him very much. 

I have now been nearly a month in this most interesting 
country and among these interesting people. China stands 
where she did when her ports were first opened to foreign trade. 
I think I see dawning, however, the beginning of a change. 
When it does come China will rapidly become a powerful and rich 
nation. Her territory is vast and full of resources. The popu- 
lation is industrious and frugal, intelligent and quick to learn. 
They must, however, have the protection of a better and more 
honest government to succeed. 

Japan is beautiful beyond description. Every street and every 
house is as clean as they can be made. The progress that has 
been made in the last dozen years is almost inconceivable. 

The man who most profoundly impressed him in China 
was the great viceroy, Li Hung Chang. In fact, he re- 
garded him as among the four great master minds of 
diplomacy and statecraft in the world, the others being 
Bismarck, Gambetta, and Beaconsfield. 

In a letter to Adam Badeau, he further says : 

My reception by the civil and military authorities of China was 
the most cordial ever extended to any foreigner, no matter what 
his rank. The fact is, the Chinese like America better, or rather, 
hate it less, than any other foreigners. The reason is palpable : 
we are the only power that recognizes their right to control their 
own domestic affairs. 

But Japan, after all, interested him more than any other 
country in the world, except England and his own land. 
In a letter to Badeau, late in August, he wrote: 

Our reception and entertainment in Japan has exceeded any- 
thing preceding it. At the end of the first year abroad I was 
quite homesick, but determined to remain to see every country 
in Europe, at least. Now, at the end of twenty-six months, I dread 



GRANT AS A PRIVATE CITIZEN GOES ABROAD 467 

going back, and would not, if there was a line of steamers between 
here and Australia ; but I shall go to my quiet little home in 
Galena, and remain there until the cold drives me away. 

Meanwhile, in America the feeling that his triumphal 
tour was fitting him to be the greatest President the nation 
had ever seen was growing in the minds of his friends. 
In every letter that came to him this suggestion was 
repeated. As early as March, 1878, he had written to 
Badeau from Rome, saying: 

Most every letter I get from the States asks me to remain 
abroad. They have designs for me which I do not contemplate 
for myself. It is probable that I will return to the United States 
early in the fall or early next spring. 

And in that quiet remark he informed his friends that 
he did not intend to take part in any cotip d'etat. 

He was assured in the letters from home that if he re- 
turned too early the effect of his triumpliant progress 
through the nation from California to the Atlantic coast 
would be frittered away in the long months of discussion 
which would follow. They implored him to stay abroad 
until June of 1880. All to no purpose. He set sail more 
than a year before the elections, and more than six months 
earlier than his political managers had wished. He felt 
about this as he had about every promotion which had 
come to him in the past. If the people desired him to be 
President for a third term, they would make him President ; 
if they did not, he was too proud and too unambitious to 
work for it. There was an element of fatalism in all this. 
Like Hamlet, he said : " If it be not now, then it will come ; 
the readiness is all." Not one word, even to his friends 
Washburne or Badeau, could be twisted into any other 
significance. 

Badeau has well summed up the characteristics of Gen- 
eral Grant as a traveler. He was undoubtedly the greatest 
traveler that ever lived ; that is to say, no other man was 
ever received by both peoples and sovereigns, by scholars 
and merchants, by tycoons and sultans and school-children 
and work-people and statesmen, as was General Grant. 
With him the Pope dispensed with etiquette, and welcomed 



468 LIFE OF GRANT 

him as a man of no creed, who did not kneel; with him 
the King of Siam formed a personal friendship; while the 
rulers of Russia, Germany, and Japan talked politics with 
him. The greatest potentates on earth laid aside their 
traditions and showed him courtesy. Not only the govern- 
ment, but the plainest people, did him honor. The multi- 
tudes thronging around him in Birmingham and Frankfort 
and Jeddo dimly perceived that they were honoring the 
democratic principle in honoring citizen Grant. 

He was, however, a peculiar traveler. He liked men 
and women better than scenery, great engineering works 
better than cathedrals, and the common people best of all. 
He loved to question the peasants concerning their life. 
He did not appreciate pictures or statuary. He refused 
to admire the " Marcus Aurelius " at Rome, and did not 
care for the " Apollo " or the " Laocoon." He grew tired 
of the Sistine Chapel, and did not care to look a second 
time at the " Last Judgment " of Angelo. He would not 
pretend in these matters. He took no interest in Venice, 
and the towers and aisles of the great cathedral made no 
marked impression upon him. The pyramids, the Alps, 
the colossal things in nature, and the homely things in 
human life, appealed to him. Delicate beauties were 
always too small for him to grasp, and literature and art 
lay outside the lines of life in which his feet were set. 

It was always, indeed, in human vocations that he took 
the keenest interest. He had a healthy naturalness that 
affiliated with plain people, though he was not offended 
with princes. He did not like princes because they were 
princes, but because they were men. No man enjoyed 
ordinary travel, the seeing strange sights in different coun- 
tries, more than he, and no man ever had greater oppor- 
tunities. He returned to America, having seen more 
faces, and having been looked upon by more human beings, 
than any other man who ever lived in the world. His 
mind was broadened and his character ennobled by his 
experiences. It was not without justice, therefore, that 
his friends at home said : " He is better fitted to be Presi- 
dent of the United States than any other American 
citizen." 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 

GENERAL GRANT'S reception at the Golden Gate 
was worthy of his great fame. When the City of 
Tokio was sighted off the coast of CaHfornia in September, 
nearly two and a half years after General Grant had left 
American soil, a single cannon-shot from the farthest point 
of land announced the comingof theillustrious home-comer. 
Cannon after cannon took up the welcome until the golden 
glow of sunset was darkened with a widely spreading storm 
of powder-smoke. 

The smoke-cloud grew heavier and heavier, and the 
booming of the guns grew fiercer, until it took but little 
imagination to conceive the tumult to be a naval engage- 
ment in full fury. The city had its clamor. As soon as 
the great bell on the central fire-station announced the 
sighting of the ship, the throttle of every engine in town 
and harbor was opened, and such a shrieking uproar began 
as was never heard before on the Pacific coast. 

The government steamer McPherson, with General 
McDowell and staff on board, steamed out to meet the 
general and his party. The City of Tokio came slowly in, 
her decks crowded with passengers, and the general and 
his party were at last made out to be seated directly in 
front of the pilot-house. 

The first person on board was the general's second son, 
Ulysses. The invitation committee followed. As General 
McDowell and staff crossed the bridge and approached 
the pilot-house, the bystanders, with uncovered heads, 
awaited the meeting of the two men who had been com- 
rades in arms for many years. 

469 



470 LIFE OF GRANT 

" How are you, Mac? " was the entirely Western salu- 
tation of General Grant. 

He was dressed in a full suit of black broadcloth, with 
black necktie and a silk hat. He was thinner than when 
he left Philadelphia, but his features were elsewise little 
changed. His friends observed the absence of lines of 
care, and the absence, also, of the scrutinizing sternness 
of glance which had characterized him when a soldier and 
when President. In manner he was entirely unchanged. 
He displayed the same dignity and reserve, and the same 
quizzical smile was in his eyes which those who knew him 
best always welcomed. 

At the city wharf he was met by the mayor, who did 
not intend to be outdone by the rulers of Newcastle and 
Liverpool. After a brief address of welcome on his 
Honor's part. General Grant made a short speech, thank- 
ing the mayor for the cordiality of his greeting, and 
expressing his heartfelt pleasure at being once more in 
California, after twenty-five years' absence. 

Some of those who gave him welcome had known him 
in 1854, and could not help thinking of the contrast in- 
volved in this return of General Grant from his trip around 
the world, the most honored American who ever traveled, 
a man who was placed by the English papers second only 
to Washington himself. Let no man despair after study- 
ing the career of this indomitable soul. 

It was a peculiar quality in the man that he never 
avoided the places where his career had been least illus- 
trious. He seemed to retain a most singular affection for 
Humboldt Bay and Fort Vancouver, notwithstanding their 
associations with his resignation from the army and en- 
forced separation from his family. One of his first ex- 
pressions was: " I want to go to Oregon, to the old fort." 

It was not all praise and joy, however. There were 
opposition papers and opposition orators, and these as- 
serted themselves in the midst of the great chorus of joy 
and admiration. They called on thoughtful men to wit- 
ness that " this unparalleled man-worship " led straight 
toward imperialism, and that it was the duty of every 
patriotic man to utter his protest against the enthronement 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 47 1 

of Ulysses Grant. To them the whole movement was the 
result of design ; it had a long-prepared and sinister 
purpose; and it was with peculiar joy that they called up 
and made public every vicious and malignant attack which 
was being made upon him both by the opposition Repub- 
licans and the Democrats. If the general was aware of 
this, he gave it no thought, or, at least, no more words 
than he gave to the absurd praise which orators lavished 
upon him. 

After some days spent in the old familiar way, receiving 
great delegations of politicians, and shaking hands with 
men, women, and children of every condition, the general 
took boat for Portland and Vancouver, to set his feet once 
more amid the scenes of his barrack life in 1853, to look 
upon the fields wherein he had tried to raise potatoes at 
a gain, and had harvested them at a loss. He returned a 
few days later to the central part of California, visiting 
Stockton, Sacramento, and other of the principal towns of 
the State. In a speech before the pioneers of '49, the 
general alluded to his life on the coast as a pleasant one. 
He had formed many attachments for the country and the 
people, he said, and he had never abandoned the hope of 
making his permanent home among the people of Cali- 
fornia. During his seven years of life as a farmer in Mis- 
souri he had thought constantly of returning, but had 
never been able to do so; and then in 1861, he dryly 
remarked, other events had intervened. 

After having visited nearly every city of importance on 
the coast, the general started on his triumphal march 
across the country. His movement was imperial in its 
importance. In every city his reception was tumultuously 
enthusiastic. At Gold Hill, at Washoe, at Carson, at Reno, 
at Salt Lake, at Denver, it seemed as if the entire popula- 
tion came forth to look upon him, and they uttered them- 
selves with a fervor which more than met the expectation 
of his enemies. Unquestionably, all that they feared was 
coming to pass : General Grant was to be a candidate for 
a third term. 

His friends, however, were much concerned because he 
had returned so early in the season. At the same time, 



472 LIFE OF GRANT 

they determined to make the most of a bad bargain, and 
in Chicago, while his imperial car was sweeping across the 
mountains, his comrades and friends in the East were 
preparing the way for still other significant salutations. 
All America was amazed at the number of his speeches. 
He explained: "When I was in Europe I had to speak; 
and having done so, it seemed to me it would be very 
uncivil to refuse the folks at home. It is very embarrass- 
ing. I think I am improving, for my knees don't knock 
together as they did at first ; but I don't like it, and I am 
sorry I yielded in the first place." 

He talked with even great freedom, speaking in the 
plainest criticism of almost any public man or public ques- 
tion under discussion. He spoke, in short, as one who no 
longer cared whether his words were to be repeated or 
not. He was not on trial now. He had the sovereign 
freedom of a common citizen. 

Singular and curious incidents took place all along the 
line. In the mountains, one man leaped upon a barrel in 
a street, as the train came to a stand, and called for three 
cheers for the "best general in the world, by God!" 
Another shouted : " Stand in the light, general, where we 
can see you." 

" But I look better in the dark," quickly replied the 
general. 

"We '11 make you President," was shouted again and 
again ; and once a man said : " General, this is a Demo- 
cratic town, and I was a Confederate soldier; but I 've 
nothing against you, God bless your old soul." 

At a banquet, a politician over-enthusiastically said : 
" General, since you came to the coast business has re- 
vived, money flows freely, and the people are all happier." 

The general waited a moment, then quietly replied : 
" I guess wheat going up thirty cents a cental has more 
to do with it than I have." 

While sweeping thus gloriously across the prairies, Zack 
Chandler, his one-time enemy in Detroit and his faithful 
friend in Washington, died. This was naturally a great 
shock to the general, and those who were with him ob- 
served his moistened eyes and tremulous voice as he spoke 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 473 

of the loyalty of his dead friend. In Zack Chandler he 
also lost a devoted third-term advocate. 

At Omaha the general made one of the longest of his 
speeches, wherein he again voiced his patriotism and love 
of his native soil, and ended by saying: "As individuals 
we do not think well enough of our country." He was, 
in fact, becoming almost too non-critical of American 
affairs. He was dangerously near the point of compla- 
cently thinking that nothing more remained to do in the 
way of reform. 

He spoke of his future with great freedom. " I have not 
been very much in Galena, but I think I shall be able to 
content myself there. When I was in Japan, I went up in 
the mountains and stayed ten days, almost alone. It was 
a novel experience for me, but I enjoyed it. I shall not 
be able to do much more than call Galena my home. It 
is a good place for me to live now, for on my present 
income I can live there much cheaper than in a large city, 
and live better than most of my neighbors. My income 
is not large enough for me to live as I would like, and I 
will have to find something to do after a while. 

" I have two farms near St. Louis, and some real estate 
in Chicago, which if I could sell I would feel better off. 
Eleven years ago I was offered fifteen hundred dollars an 
acre for it, but now, after paying taxes on it all this time, 
I could n't get two hundred and fifty dollars for it; but I 
did better in some other investments, or I could never 
have traveled abroad as long as I have." 

He overflowed with good spirits, and seemed to be on 
his guard against nothing except the question of his own 
candidacy. The elections which were about to be held 
promised Republican victory. Grant's influence seemed 
to be in the air ; no one questioned at this moment his 
dominancy of the public mind. 

On the day after election he entered once more the 
obscure little town in which his home was set. Again his 
old friends and neighbors crowded to meet him ; again 
triumphal arches spanned the streets, and tattered war- 
flags draped the platform from which the address of 
welcome was to be delivered. Washburne was there, 



474 LIFE OF GRANT 

and General Rowley, General Smith, General Logan, 
Governor Cullom, Senator Allison, and many more whom 
he had aided and who had aided him in his great career. 
Senator McClellan, the man who had made the presenta- 
tion address in the new house, now made the address of 
welcome, to which Grant replied with twitching lips and 
tear-dimmed eyes. 

He said it was a great pleasure to come once more to 
Galena, especially after two and a half years of absence in a 
foreign country. " During my travels I received princely 
honors ; but they were all due to this country, and to you 
as citizens and sovereigns of so great a nation." 

Again, when the blare of trumpets and the flutter of 
flags had given place to the ordinary prosaic quiet of daily 
life in Galena, the general went forth to meet his fellow- 
citizens, assuming nothing more than they. The whole 
city watched him to see what changes had come to him. 

Said one of his old friends: " I don't see any change in 
General Grant since the day he left here to go into the 
army, in 1861. He may have more freedom of manner in 
the presence of the public, but that comes naturally from 
his association with the most prominent men of this and 
other countries." 

After a week of quiet life in Galena, the general moved 
on to Chicago. The newspapers flamed with head-lines 
of welcome, and their columns blossomed with poetical 
eulogy. More than one hundred thousand people came 
into the city from surrounding towns and cities. It is of 
little avail attempting to describe this tremendous wel- 
come. It was such as no man in America had ever re- 
ceived. It was evident that there was in it political design 
as well as genuine enthusiasm for the man. 

The nominal occasion was the reunion of the Army of 
the Cumberland and the Army of the Tennessee, but deep 
down the politicians were working. Grant was ill at ease 
in the city's meeting because of the strongly political 
remarks of the mayor; but at the camp-fire of the Grand 
Army reunion he was happy. 

His greeting there had a quality which could not be in 
any other meeting. Sherman was there, and spoke, and 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 475 

SO did Logan and Sheridan and Schofield. All his old 
companions rallied around him once more, as in the days 
of 1865 and 1868. It was noticed that the general was 
more powerful in speech at the camp-fire than when 
replying to the praise bestowed upon him by the mayor. 
He made special effort to be heard by his comrades, and 
his voice reached nearly every part of the theater. 

He said it afforded him heartfelt pleasure to be again 
with his old comrades in arms. " This is a non-partizan 
association," he said, " but composed of men who are 
united in the determination that no foe shall interpose 
between us and the maintenance of our institutions and 
the unity of all the States. I am proud that I am an 
American citizen. Every citizen, North, South, East, and 
West, enjoys a common heritage, and should feel that equal 
pride in it"; and his patriotic words had a peculiar inten- 
sity, to which his hearers responded heartily. 

At the end of the week the general returned to Galena 
to spend Thanksgiving. 

Meanwhile, it was evident from the press of the country 
that there was a mighty stirring among the opposition 
politicians. They were appalled at Grant's augmented 
popularity. One of his most unrelenting enemies admitted 
that Grant was never before so personally popular, and 
never before so dangerous ; and not a few of the Southern 
journals discussed the possibility of Grant as a candidate 
of the progressive party in the South and the Liberal 
Republicans in the North. Other equally absurd and 
unheard-of surmises as to his action were set afloat and 
discussed, while through it all the general remained, as 
usual, absolutely silent. 

Late in the month he returned to Chicago for a few 
days, and then began his conquering march across Indiana, 
Ohio, and Pennsylvania, to complete the circuit of the 
world in the city of Philadelphia, It was the same old 
story in every city — in Logansport, in Indianapolis, in 
Columbus, in Cincinnati, one continuous blaze of bound- 
less enthusiasm. There was no question whatever about 
the depth and the width of this admiration, and could he 
have gone to election at that moment, no power on earth 



476 LIFE OF GRANT 

could have prevented him from being elected President, 
with an increased majority over his former elections. 

His policy was now settled, and his friends thoroughly 
understood it. He said : " I will neither accept nor de- 
cline an imaginary thing. I shall not gratify my enemies 
by declining what has not been offered me. I am not a 
candidate for anything, and if the Chicago convention 
nominates a candidate who can be elected, I shall be glad. 
All my life I have made my decision when the time for 
the decision has arrived. I shall not depart from my usual 
course of action." 

He left for Cuba and Mexico, therefore, without giving 
any definite reply to the agonized questions of his enemies 
nor the eager appeals of his friends. He did not intend 
to be harassed by the coming political struggle, nor to 
take part in it until such time as it was proper for him 
to act. 

In March, from the Mexican border, he wrote to Wash- 
burne, saying: 

In regard to your suggestion that I should authorize some one 
to say that in no event I would consent to ever becoming a 
candidate after 1880, I think any statement from me would be 
misconstrued, and would only serve as a handle for my enemies. 
Such a statement might well be made after the nomination, if I 
am nominated in such a way as to accept. It is a matter of 
supreme indifference to me whether I am or not. There are 
many persons I should prefer to have the office than myself. I 
owe so much to the Union men of the country that if they think 
my chances are better for election than for other probable can- 
didates in case I should decline, I cannot decline if the nomina- 
tion is tendered without seeking on my part. 

Mexico shows many signs of progress since I was here thirty- 
two years ago. Railroads are pushing out slowly from the capi- 
tal, and with every advance prosperity and employment for the 
poor follow. I think it should be the policy of our government 
now to cultivate the strongest feelings of friendship between the 
people of the two republics. 

The Mexicans during his trip had recognized in him 
their great and consistent friend. He was eager to do 
something to make amends for the injustice of the Mexi- 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 477 

can War, and every proper and consistent plan for the 
advancement of Mexico had his most earnest cooperation. 

He visited Vera Cruz, Puebla, Contreras, Chapultepec, 
Mohno del Rey, and other scenes of his youthful career 
as a soldier. He had forgotten nothing. He was deeply 
interested in every change, and looked up all the old 
veterans who had remained behind in 1848. He promised 
his aid in any good enterprise the people might undertake. 

He reentered the United States early in April, and spent 
several days in New Orleans, where he was received with 
great interest and cordiality, being welcomed to the city 
by General Silas Bussey, who said : " This demonstration 
is an evidence that the sentiment which you bequeathed 
to the country when you said, ' Let us have peace,' is 
really upon the land." 

In reply, the general said : " I am very glad to hear 
that this kind reception is by your citizens, irrespective of 
former relations. The scenes of war are now past. We 
are a united people. If this country should unfortunately 
become involved in war, we will all wear the same uniform 
and fight under the same flag." 

A few days later he met the legislature. The Speaker, 
in introducing the general, said: "There is not to-day in 
the heart of any man within the hearing of my voice any- 
thing but a feeling of loyal love and deep devotion for the 
American Union. We can, therefore, sir, with the entire 
American people, rejoice at the honors paid at your feet — 
honors that stir with patriotic emotions the hearts of men." 

General Grant replied : " I am delighted to hear such 
generous sentiments. I have always felt that differences 
between a common people after they have once been 
settled should remain settled forever afterward. I am 
sure that I rejoice as much as any member of this legisla- 
ture at anything that goes to make up the prosperity of 
Louisiana and of the entire South. I believe that among 
the bravest of the defenders of our Union henceforth will 
be found the men before me." 

A committee, with Judge Simrall as chairman, came 
down from Vicksburg to extend to him a cordial invitation 
to come among them and stay as long as possible. 



478 LIFE OF GRANT 

"I bear this invitation, general, from the people of that 
battlement city whose stubborn hills and frowning guns 
some years ago — aye, not so many — forbade your ingress 
for many long months, and whose successful capture, after so 
many attempts had failed, was the first grand achievement 
which placed you before the world as the foremost warrior 
in the Union army. 

" Time's strong hand has been busy with our city since 
then. Peace and wise laws and busy commerce have 
swept from our hills all vestiges of war, and from the 
hearts of our people all feelings of bitterness. Once they 
disputed your entrance; now they ask you to come — to 
come as their honored guest, whom they will be glad and 
proud to welcome." 

" I shall be glad to go to Vicksburg," the general replied, 
and a slight smile crept into the fine lines about his eyes. 
" I am glad to be able to go through the front door; once, 
you know, I was forced to come in through the back 
door." 

He visited Mobile, and later took his way up the river 
to Vicksburg and Memphis ; and notwithstanding the 
peculiar situation which made honor and praise of their 
great visitor politically dangerous, the people of these 
cities expressed themselves freely, and he as freely replied. 
To all he said : " The war and the things for which we 
warred are settled. We should set our faces toward the 
future, a united and harmonious people"; and of course 
every emphasis made by him upon this thought was taken 
by his political enemies to mean that he was planning to 
become the candidate of these people. As a matter of 
fact, he was thinking rather of the nation's future. He 
by no means evaded the negro question, but spoke as 
plainly as was his wont, saying, " The negro is here, and 
is here to stay, and his rights must be maintained," though 
he admitted that time was required for this problem to 
work itself out. 

Neither did he evade the society of the colored men, 
but met them heartily. He gave up one entire day to 
them in New Orleans. He said to a gathering of them: 
" I am pleased to see such evidence of the progress of the 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 479 

race as you have shown me to-day. The chief security 
for the future of your people Hes in popular education. I 
hope," he said further, " that the colored man will be al- 
lowed the privilege of going where he pleases, but I wish 
he may be so treated that he will be pleased to remain 
where he is." 

He seemed to be making a study of the condition of 
the colored people, and perhaps no other man could have 
gone among them in such wise without giving offense to 
the white people who were entertaining him almost simul- 
taneously. It was recognized that Grant was too large in 
fame for such action to do him harm. 

At Vicksburg the address of welcome was delivered by 
Colonel McCardle, a Confederate officer. He extended, 
on behalf of all the people of Vicksburg, a warm and 
cordial welcome. ** When I say all our people, sir, I 
mean it, without regard to race or color, political predi- 
lection or religious creed. There was a time when your 
presence here was less welcome than it is to-day. You 
were then, with a large retinue of your friends, anxious 
to make a visit to this city, and those of us who were then 
present were equally anxious that you should forego that 
pleasure. For forty-seven weary days and nights, be- 
neath a pitiless storm of shot and shell, we sought to avoid 
having you with us; but your attentions were so press- 
ing and persistent that we finally concluded to receive 
you." 

After the laughter and applause had subsided, the tactful 
orator proceeded : " And now, sir, nearly seventeen years 
after the first visit, it affords me pleasure to say that your 
treatment of the garrison surrendered to you on the fourth 
day of July, 1863, was kind, considerate, and generous. 
In your deportment, and in that of the officers and men 
who accompanied you, there was nothing unworthy of the 
character of the American soldier. 

" How different is the scene to-day! Hostile vessels 
no longer ride upon our waters, and our green declivities 
echo no longer with the clash of steel, the rattle of mus- 
ketry, and the thunder of artillery. All is peace, calm, and 
quiet. Some of those who looked upon you with sad 



480 LIFE OF GRANT 

hearts and swimming eyes as you rode through our streets 
that bright July morning are here to-day to give you 
welcome as the distinguished American soldier and only 
living ex-President of the United States. 

" We cannot offer you, sir, such a pageant as has greeted 
you, like the drum-beat of old England, all around the 
world ; but in its stead we extend to you a cordial greet- 
ing, and bid you welcome to our home. 

" We concur, sir, in the hope recently expressed by 
you in New Orleans, that the wearers of the blue and gray 
may never again be arrayed against each other. We 
desire that in any future war the men of the North and 
the men of the South shall be found rallying around the 
same flag." 

After this most suave and tasteful oration, the Hon. 
Mr. Carter read an address on behalf of the colored citi- 
zens, which was a tribute to the great soldier for accom- 
plishing their liberation ; and when the general, who had 
listened to both addresses, rose and stood with uncovered 
head, a hush so profound that it became thrilling fell upon 
the throng. 

He began by expressing the pleasure he felt at this re- 
ception, and confessed to a feeling of great satisfaction upon 
his safe arrival in Vicksburg at the time the gentleman 
referred to. " I am glad that the conflict is over, and that 
it left us united. I know that nothing can again array the 
blue against the gray." 

All that day the people crowded to see him, and when, 
at seven o'clock, he started for Memphis, never again to 
visit the scenes of his great siege, he turned a bright page 
in the history of the city and of the South. It was of 
the highest significance that the man who had once been 
the daily terror and the dread conqueror of a city should 
become its honored guest within fifteen years after the 
close of the war in which the two sections had been en- 
gaged. Mankind is slowly civilizing. 

At Memphis it was the same thing repeated. Another 
mass of struggling people was eager to come within sight 
of him. The streets were thronged, the buildings gay 
with bunting, and the windows and balconies filled with 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 48 1 

smiling faces. If there were those who hated him, they 
were not in evidence. The general bowed and smiled to 
all, seemingly as pleased to see the people as the people 
were to see him. At Cairo, which was the gateway to 
the South, the general appeared to turn and glance back 
over his trail with profound pleasure. He had been deeply 
touched by his reception in these Southern cities, and to 
all the North he proclaimed the South to be at peace, and 
eager for a future in which strife should have no part. 
Without doubt he was moved by a sincere belief in the 
truth of his utterance, no matter what his political oppo- 
nents might say or think. 

Meanwhile, as he was on his way from Cairo to Chicago, 
a great meeting of Grant adherents openly and with great 
power initiated the third-term boom by an immense meet- 
ing in Chicago. Up to this time nothing formal had been 
done in the way of presenting his name. This meeting 
proclaimed to the world that General Grant would accept 
the nomination if it came in a right way. 

Without alluding to the meeting, the general went his 
way to his home in Galena, and there quietly remained 
until the convention. He did nothing either for or against 
his nomination. It was understood, however, that he was 
in the hands of his friends, and there were those who 
claimed that he was exceedingly anxious to receive the 
nomination. The truth seems to be that he was moved 
in the matter more out of consideration for his family than 
for himself. He was comparatively indifferent, but Mrs. 
Grant and his son were eager to see him again in power. 
Without doubt he considered himself better fitted to be 
President than ever before in his life. Whatever argument 
had been valid against a third term four years before could 
scarcely count after an interregnum of four years, and he 
saw no reason why he should not become with perfect 
propriety a candidate for a third term. 

The temptation, also, was great because he was in need 
of money. General Sherman, in a letter some time before 
the convention, said : " Grant does not care to be Presi- 
dent again. He wants employment ; he wants to make 
money." 



482 LIFE OF GRANT 

Whatever may have been the motive which influenced 
him, he certainly allowed every step to be taken in the 
design to nominate him. There were friends who said he 
could not be elected, if nominated ; but this was disputed 
by others. The struggle, they knew, would be in the con- 
vention, and not in the country at large. The battle was 
to be between Grant, Blaine, and Sherman, with Blaine as 
the more formidable antagonist. As the convention day 
drew near, the fight became so definite in outline that 
experts were able to name almost the exact number of 
ballots which each candidate would command at the open- 
ing of the roll-call of States. 

To those most sensitive there was a distinct element of 
pathos in the fact that General Grant, who had carried 
two conventions absolutely without opposition, should 
now, in his old age and at the very zenith of his fame, 
enter upon a bitter and almost hopeless struggle. Doubtless 
before he absolutely consented that his name should go 
before the convention he took into account that nearly 
three hundred delegates were pledged to his support. 
He would thus enter the convention with more votes than 
any other candidate, and it seemed impossible that he 
should not be nominated on the second ballot. 

The convention was long in getting under way. The 
delegates foresaw a stern contest, and throughout all the 
preliminaries the leaders skirmished for position. Every 
step was an attempt to secure advantage. 

During these days of preparation the general continued 
to live quietly at his home in Galena. He did not take 
the trouble to have a private wire extended to his house. 
Each day he came down-town a little while in the fore- 
noon, and then again strolled down in the afternoon. 
Occasionally he was seen in the evening. He betrayed 
no excitement whatever ; seemingly he was neither anxious 
nor alarmed. He made his headquarters usually in the 
law oflfice of Rowley, his old stafT-officer. He was in 
Rowley's office the evening his name was presented to 
the convention. 

His son Ulysses was with him, also. Fearing his father 
was about to be defeated, and fearing also that he might 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 483 

be bitterly disappointed, young Grant came on from New 
York City to be with him during this time of strenuous 
excitement. 

At last a bulletin came. Conkling had risen, and had 
presented the general's name before the convention in the 
following words: " And when they ask whence comes our 
candidate, we say. From Appomattox and its apple-tree." 
The applause had interrupted him, and had continued for 
several minutes. 

The faithful presentation of his name had been made, 
but the general betrayed no excitement, scarcely interest. 
A thoughtful look was on his face. 

A few moments later a second bulletin was read : " The 
applause continues." And then another: "The applause is 
beginning again. All order is lost ; the hall is one surging 
mass of shouting humanity. It has gone far beyond any 
other demonstration." 

While his friends leaped to their feet with the thrill of 
excitement caught from the great electrical storm in the 
convention-hall, shouting exultantly, " General, that settles 
it; you will be nominated on the first ballot," the general 
moved uneasily in his chair, and his face darkened a little. 
Either from modesty or a natural dislike of applause, he 
made up his mind to go home. 

He rose abruptly, saying to his son : " Come, Buck, let 's 
go home"; and together the father and son stepped out 
into the street, and walked for some time in silence. At 
length the general drew a deep sigh, as though about to 
reassume a burden almost too great for his strength, and 
said in a low voice, with a touch of sadness in its falling 
cadence: " I am afraid I am going to be nominated." 

When the son heard his father say that, his mind was 
instantly relieved. He saw that defeat could not crush 
the general, nor victory exalt him. He left immediately 
for his Eastern home. 

During the days following the general spent a great 
deal of his time at Rowley's office, listening to the bulle- 
tins with unmoved countenance. He was there when the 
first ballot was taken, giving him three hundred and four 
votes against Blaine with two hundred and eighty-four. 



484 LIFE OF GRANT 

Perhaps this was a disappointment; perhaps he, too, had 
expected to be nominated on the first ballot. As these 
three hundred and four men voted again and again and 
again, he came to have a keen admiration of their courage. 
The vote soon showed that the fight was to be one of the 
bitterest ever seen in American history. 

At last a telegram came to him from Senator Conkling, 
which announced, in substance: "The Shermen men say 
that they will support you if you will promise to put Sher- 
man in the cabinet." 

Instantly the old general became granite and iron. He 
replied : " I will not consent to any agreement in order to 
secure the nomination for President of the United States." 

Right there he ended his pubHc career. He was willing 
to accept the nomination if it came to him spontaneously 
from the people, — in fact, he considered it his duty to 
accept under such circumstances, — but he would not make 
a bargain, not even for this high prize. The Sherman 
men went away and made a deal elsewhere. 

At the end of the twenty-eighth ballot the Old Guard 
of three hundred and four Grant men had secured three 
additional votes. Nothing like the splendid constancy of 
these men had ever been known in politics. They could 
not be scared, nor bought, nor wheedled, nor deceived. 
They were for Grant first, last, and all the time. And on 
the final ballot, which gave to James A. Garfield three 
hundred and ninety-nine ballots, the Grant men stood with 
unbroken ranks and with two additional votes. They 
were defeated, but not dismayed. They stood throughout 
the battle like the Old Guard at Waterloo. They passed 
into history three hundred and six supporters of the great 
general, and will forever be known as the Old Guard. 

When the final vote was announced to General Grant 
by his friend Rowley, he brushed the ashes from his cigar, 
and said : " Garfield is a good man. I am glad of it. 
Good night, gentlemen." He rose quietly, and walked 
out without another word. By that ballot it was settled 
forever that General Grant must spend the remaining years 
of his life as a private citizen. 

To his intimate friends, however, he complained a little. 



THE THIRD CAMPAIGN OPENS 485 

" My friends have not been honest with me. I can't 
afford to be defeated. They should not have placed me 
in nomination unless they felt perfectly sure of my suc- 
cess." This was the only complaint he ever made, and 
he did not dwell upon that. 

To show his good will, and to insure, if possible, the 
success of the Republican party, he got out into the field 
and did what he had never before consented to do: he 
made political speeches. He spared no effort to bring the 
leaders of his own campaign to indorse and to elect Gen- 
eral Garfield, and it was largely due to his power, to his 
great influence actually exerted, that the Republicans were 
able to win a victory so complete as to be beyond all ques- 
tion. There was no dispute over Garfield's election. 

As the general had said so often in his letters to Wash- 
burne and to Badeau, he could not afford to live longer 
without employment, and his income was too small to 
warrant a living in New York unless he secured some dig- 
nified and profitable position. His family urged his re- 
moval to New York, feeling sure that something would 
turn up to help him make a living. He purchased a house 
on East Sixty-sixth Street, and this became his permanent 
home. 



CHAPTER XLIX 

THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 

THE position in which General Grant found himself 
after the election of Garfield was one difficult to sus- 
tain He was a man holding higher honors than any- 
other American who had ever lived, and yet he was not 
fitted to earn the living which his position demanded. 
He had no business training. He was not even economi- 
cal. He could not save the small income which he had. 
He was accustomed to doing things in a large way. His 
life had been one of enormous activity and responsibility, 
and it was impossible for him to retire to the quiet and 
humdrum life of a farmer in St. Louis or Galena. Even 
if he had been willing to do this, his family urged other 
things. 

His sons were all engaged in enterprises which de- 
manded city life. His son Frederick had married a 
woman accustomed to the life of a city ; his second son, 
Ulysses, had married the daughter of Senator Chaffee of 
Colorado ; and his son Jesse had married the daughter of 
Senator Flood of California. They were all ambitious to 
succeed in business, and had determined to settle in New 
York City. It was inevitable, therefore, that the general 
himself should go to the great metropolis with his children, 
though at the time his friends argued against it, and some 
of them predicted demoralization. 

The general was eager to earn money. Money had 
always had a singular fascination for him. He had sought 
the society of rich men. They appealed to his imagination. 
They could do the things which he could not. And, 
with the perversity of genius, he wished to prove that he 

486 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 487 

was something more than a mere soldier — that he could 
make a living; and, above all, he was eager to provide the 
luxury which his wife had become accustomed to, and 
which he delighted to see her enjoy. Nothing else re- 
mained for him to do now. 

For all these reasons he did what his sincerest friends 
wished him not to do. He entered Wall Street. The 
circumstances under which this took place were very 
curious. To tell the story of General Grant's venture in 
New York City is to tell the story of one of the most re- 
markable periods of inflation and boom the country has 
ever known, and to outline one of the most singular char- 
acters that ever rose from the deeps of that tumult of 
speculation which the whole nation has in mind when it 
hears the words " Wall Street." 

Some time about the year 1877 a slim young man with 
a pale and meager face applied to the superintendent of 
the New York Produce Exchange for a position. He 
based his application upon the fact that the superinten- 
dent had known his father in an interior town years before. 
The superintendent recalled the young man as the son 
of an excellent father, a returned missionary, and, being 
well disposed toward him, secured for him the clerkship 
of the exchange, at a salary of $1000 a year. The super- 
intendent was Mr. S. H. Grant, and the young clerk was 
Ferdinand Ward. Mr. S. H. Grant was not related in any 
degree to General Grant. 

Ward filled his position acceptably, and had time to 
figure in various speculative opportunities besides. At that 
time seats in the exchange were rated low, and seeing an 
upward tendency in business, young Ward began buying 
these seats as fast as he was able to raise the money, and 
selling them at a profit. He went into a number of specu- 
lations, all of which turned out to be profitable. He be- 
came acquainted with the daughter of the cashier of the 
Marine National Bank, and wooed and married her. He 
made acquaintances rapidly, and turned casual associations 
into friendships, one of the most valuable of his friend- 
ships being with Mr. J. D. Fish, president of the Marine 
National Bank. 



488 LIFE OF GRANT 

Thus, in one way and another, Ferdinand Ward won 
a reputation as a bright young business man of most ex- 
cellent connections. Some time in 1879 he met, through 
his brother William, Ulysses Grant, the second son of 
General Grant, who had established himself with a law 
firm in New York City. Young Grant had charge of 
General Grant's property, of two trust estates, and also of 
other funds. Young Ward at once asked him to go into 
some speculations with him, and set forth the safety of an 
investment in flour certificates, which his position as clerk 
of the exchange gave him special insight into. Young 
Grant allowed Ward to use some money in this way, and 
the venture proved successful. Ward then interested him 
in the scheme of buying seats in the Produce Exchange, 
and holding them against the coming boom. This, too, 
was successful. Everything he touched turned to gold. 
It was a time of inflation. Land was rising. Railways 
were opening up new territory in the West and South. 
The " bull " side of the market was the winning side, and 
Ward was naturally a bull. He took all risks, and, as the 
times favored, every venture seemed to win. He was on 
the inside of every new scheme which the street developed, 
and young Grant found his bank-account growing with 
gratifying rapidity. He was not yet a formal partner, 
however, the speculations thus far being merely as a 
friendly association for the individual enterprises in hand. 
The time came when Ward owed his partner, on borrowed 
money and ostensible profits, nearly $100,000. At this 
point he proposed that a private banking firm be organ- 
ized to do a regular Wall Street business, in which he was 
to be financial agent. In this firm J. D. Fish and General 
Grant were to be silent partners. Young Grant at first 
declined, but upon the urging of Ward, and the assurance 
that Mr. Fish was coming in, finally consented. 

In 1880, when General Grant first met him. Ward was 
regarded as the most brilliant young business man on the 
street. His office was the meeting-place of the most 
trusted and influential men of affairs, and his standing was 
of the highest. Every venture he had commended had 
succeeded, and General Grant would have been a singular 




U. S. Grant when he took up his residence in New York, age 59 years. 
From a photograph by W. Kurtz. 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 489 

exception had he refused to go further with such a finan- 
cier, especially as the president of the Marine Bank was to 
be a special partner in the firm. 

The firm of Grant & Ward at once took high rank. 
Bradstreet rated it "gilt-edged," and its credit was un- 
questioned. When, in 1880, General Grant had been 
defeated for a third nomination to the Presidency, the 
question of engaging in some business arose. He could 
not be idle. He was done with politics, and he was not 
fitted for any profession. He had refused the presidency 
of the Nicaraguan Canal, but had accepted the presidency 
of the Mexican Southern Railway, on the understanding 
that he was not to receive any salary or any stock. He 
had plenty of opportunities to allow the use of his name, 
but his deep interest in Mexico, which sprang from his 
early life there, was more powerful than any offer of 
money. He at once put all his savings (about $100,000) 
into the firm of Grant & Ward, on condition that he was 
to be a special partner, liable only for the money he put 
in. He was willing to go into a business as clean and 
secure as that of Grant & Ward seemed to be. Soon 
after this a fund was raised for him by some New York 
citizens, and invested in Wabash bonds, upon which he 
realized about $15,000 a year, and from the rents of his 
houses he received enough to bring his income up to 
about $25,000 a year, which was not a large amount for 
a man of his world-wide reputation. 

His office as president of the Mexican railroad was in 
a building on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, 
the first floor of which was occupied by Grant & Ward. 
The firm was now composed of Ferdinand Ward, J. D. 
Fish, General Grant, and his son Ulysses. Ward was 
the financial agent and sole manager. The general had 
no detailed knowledge of the business, and asked for none. 
He left the whole matter to his son Ulysses, who, in turn, 
trusted Ward with the entire financial management. 
Thus Ward had complete control ; but as offset to this, 
he said he was willing to guarantee the firm against loss. 
So phenomenally successful did he prove, both in the firm 
of Grant & Ward and also in his outside speculations, 



490 LIFE OF GRANT 

that great business firms trusted themselves as completely 
in his hands as did the Grants. J. D. Fish backed him 
to any amount; and Mr. S. H. Grant, the city controller, 
and Mr. Tappan, city chamberlain, and Mr. W. R. Grace, 
Mr. W. S. Warner, Senator Chaffee, and many others were 
equally trustful. In addition to its fine credit, the firm 
started with a paid-in capital of $400,000.* 

It was a time of " boom " : that should be remembered. 
Speculation was universal. Fortunes were made in a day, 
— almost in an hour, — and men were prepared to believe 
any sort of romance which concerned itself with railways 
or buildings. The way was prepared for a man like Ward, 
who had an uncanny power over men. His words were 
golden, and his daily life a fairy-tale of speculation. He 
captivated and controlled almost every man he met. He 
played upon the universal and very human love of quick 
gains, and he found his investors among the leading firms 
of lower New York City. Wall Street, and not the coun- 
try village, was his field. He disdained small gains and 
narrow fields. He talked in millions. He paid enormous 
dividends to his investors, who trusted him in outside 
speculations, and large and regular profits arose out of the 
Wall Street business. He became the " young Napoleon 
of finance." 

At Ward's suggestion, Ulysses, Jr., early in the deal, 
offered to pay to General Grant $3000 per month for the 
use of his money, but gave him the option of leaving it in 
the business if he wished. To this the general replied: 
" I don't think I can afford to do that. If you don't make 
that much, I don't want you to make up the deficit; and 
if you make more, it is rightfully mine. I would rather 
you paid me what my money brings in, be it a small sum 
or a large one." Ward's method was not to advertise 
much — " merely to let a few friends know " that the firm 
was doing an exceedingly profitable business by lending 
money to men who had contracts. He was careful to 
say to General Grant and his sons that the firm was 
not handling any contracts with the government, and 

* As was afterward developed, the Grants furnished the cash, and the 
other members of the firm the " securities." 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 49 1 

warned Mr. Spencer, his cashier, to be careful about 
that also. 

The regular transactions of the firm, and the only ones 
appearing in the books to which the Grants had access, 
were of a different nature, like loaning money to the Erie 
Railway, purchases of city bonds, and other equally safe 
and stable investments. These loans gave tone to the 
firm, and inspired confidence. " It is my plan," said 
Ward, " to build up a great firm that shall live after Grant 
& Ward, its founders, have passed away." 

Ward was a man of most exemplary life. He lived 
well, but quietly, and had no bad habits. He seemed a 
thoughtful man, and his peculiarities distinguished him as 
a man born with a special genius for great financial enter- 
prises. He seemed to be capable of the most colossal 
affairs, and men of the highest business qualifications 
shared in this belief. In these days it would be said that 
his influence was hypnotic. 

In this fashion the firm swam prosperously on. U. S. 
Grant, Jr., received occasional statements from Ward, 
which he laid before his father. These papers the gen- 
eral returned without examination, for he had arrived at 
unquestioning faith in his son's business ability. Profits 
had been large. The firm, from operations in stocks, 
bonds, and railway contracts, soon had a bank-account of 
nearly a million dollars, and handled vast sums of money. 
Senator Chaffee had invested $400,000 in the business, 
and there were innumerable small investors. From a 
capital of $400,000, the firm, in a little more than three 
years, was rated at fifteen millions. Ferdinand Ward, in 
his own fashion, outside the firm of Grant & Ward, had 
entered upon the most gigantic enterprises, apparently 
with unfailing success. Of these outside ventures the 
Grants knew nothing. Ulysses Grant, Jr., had access only 
to the one set of books wherein the Wall Street business 
was recorded. He knew scarcely a tenth of the investors. 
He did not know that his own law partners were interested 
in Ward's affairs. The record of the huge debts of the 
firm was in books kept secret by Ward and Fish. 

One Sunday afternoon in early May, 1884, Ward called 



492 LIFE OF GRANT 

at General Grant's house, and asked to see both the gen- 
eral and young Ulysses. He announced that late on 
Saturday, Mr. Tappan, the city chamberlain, had drawn 
on the Marine Bank for a very large sum whicli the bank 
held on deposit for the city, and that the reserves were 
perilously low. " It is necessary," said he, " to put some 
money in before the clearing-house opens to-morrow 
morning, in order that the bank may make a proper 
showing." 

To this young Grant very naturally replied : " Why 
should we borrow money to aid the Marine Bank? " 

Ward for a moment seemed puzzled, but answered, after 
a moment's hesitation : " We have $660,000 on deposit 
there, and it would embarrass us very much if the bank 
should close its doors." 

" They are good for it, are they not? " 

" Oh, yes ; but there would be delay before we could 
get our money, and it might give us trouble." 

Having convinced them both of the need of aiding the 
bank, Ward at last proposed that General Grant go out 
and borrow $150,000. Young Grant said that it was not 
easy to raise such a sum on Sunday afternoon, and to this 
Ward replied : " I know that ; but I know the general can 
borrow it, if anybody can." 

The general at length consented to go forth in aid of 
the Marine Bank. After calling upon one or two men 
who declared themselves unable to help him, he drove to 
the house of W. K. Vanderbilt, and explained the matter 
to Mr. Vanderbilt at length. It was not for himself, but 
for the Marine Bank, he said, in conclusion. 

Mr. Vanderbilt took young Grant's view of it. " I care 
nothing about the Marine Bank, General Grant. To tell 
the truth, I care very little about Grant & Ward. But 
to accommodate you personally, I will draw my check for 
the amount you ask. I consider it a personal loan to you, 
and not to any other party," he said pointedly. 

General Grant took the check, and returned to Ward, 
who was waiting. Ward thanked him, and putting the 
check in his pocket, left the house. The next morning, 
before the banks opened, young Grant called for a check 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 493 

drawn on the Marine Bank for the full amount, and hurried 
with it up to Vanderbilt's house, eager to pay the debt at 
the earliest moment. He found Mr. Vanderbilt at home, 
and delivered the check into his hands. Both vicn con- 
sidered the debt paid and the whole transaction closed. 

Monday saw everything righted. There was no further 
trouble, and the Grants dismissed the incident from their 
minds. Once, late in the afternoon, as Ward passed 
through the room, Ulysses Grant, Jr., asked: "Every- 
thing all right?" and Ward replied cheerily: "All right 
now." But that night, after dinner, a messenger came to 
young Grant from Ward, saying that Tappan had drawn 
again, and that it would be necessary to borrow $500,000. 
" I '11 try for $250,000, and you do the same." 

Mr. Grant was a little irritated at the demand, and for a 
moment thought of making no further attempt to help the 
Marine Bank out of its distress. However, after thought, 
he concluded to make the attempt, and taking a list of 
negotiable securities which Ward had sent by the mes- 
senger, he went to Jay Gould, and presented the matter. 

Mr. Gould curtly replied : " I don't like lending on 
those securities " ; and young Grant concluded to do no 
more borrowing for the Marine Bank. He went to S. B. 
Elkins, however, and explained the situation. Mr. Elkins, 
who was Senator Chaffee's attorney, seemed a little bit 
puzzled over the case. " I don't understand this. Sup- 
pose we go over to Brooklyn and see Ward." 

Ward was out, but they decided to wait for him, although 
it was nearly midnight. The servants were directed by 
Mrs. Ward to set out some cake and wine, and the two 
men remained seated in the dining-room till after midnight, 
waiting, with growing anxiety, for Ward. It was well 
toward one in the morning when Ward suddenly and 
noiselessly entered by a side door. He was calm and 
very self-contained. He explained his absence by saying 
he had been to see some capitalists. He said he had not 
been able to raise any money, but did not seem specially 
disappointed at his own or his partner's failure to borrow 
the sums needed. All agreed that the Marine Bank 
must needs take care of itself. 



494 LIFE OF GRANT 

Mr. Elkins, however, as attorney for Senator Chaffee, 
who was one of the largest investors in the Grant & 
Ward business, demanded, on his cHent's behalf, to be 
secured. Ward said, "Very well," but added: " I don't 
see the need, when Senator Chaffee can have his money 
at any time on demand." 

Mr, Elkins insisted, and Ward promised to be at the 
office early the next morning to turn over sufficient secu- 
rities to cover the whole amount of the senator's invest- 
ment. Upon this, young Grant and Elkins took their 
departure ; but all the way across the city Elkins dis- 
cussed Ward's manner. " The whole thing is suspicious. 
Did you observe he had his slippers on? He was in the 
house all the time, and was afraid to come down and see 
us. Why should he enter at the side door?" 

Grant stoutly thrust aside these suspicions ; his faith was 
unshaken. Early the next morning Mr. Elkins and young 
Ulysses hastened to the office. Ward was not there. 

" Where is Ward ? " asked Grant of Spencer, the cashier. 

" I don't know," replied Spencer. " I came by the house 
this morning, and when I rang the bell, Mrs. Ward came 
down, much excited, and said Ferdinand had gone out 
early, leaving a note to the effect that the bank would fail 
that day, and that he would not be home. She seemed 
afraid that he was about to commit suicide, and wanted 
me to go and look for him." 

Colonel Fred Grant came out of an inner office at this 
moment, and said that Mr. Fish had been in, much excited, 
to say that the Grant & Ward accounts were all over- 
drawn, and that he would not certify or pay any more of 
the firm's checks. 

Young Ulysses was amazed. " That can't be," he said. 
" We have over $600,000 on deposit there. Is not that 
the sum, Mr. Spencer?" 

The cashier brought the book ; $660,000 was the exact 
amount. 

Young Grant went on : " It is impossible that our 
account is overdrawn. Ward's account may be, but the 
firm's cash is, according to Spencer's books, $660,000." 

" Make test of it," said Mr. Elkins. " Draw a check 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 495 

for cash, and send one of your people over to the bank. 
Let him find out the balance of Grant & Ward's account, 
and also Ward's personal account." 

This was done, and in a short time the messenger re- 
turned to say that the officers of the bank, by order of Mr. 
Fish, refused to pay the check, and stated that they could 
not honor any more Grant & Ward checks. 

This was startling news, but even then young Grant 
did not realize its full import. He knew of but one inter- 
est that was suffering at this time — that of Mr. ChafTee ; 
and when Mr. Elkins insisted on being secured, there was 
but one thing to do : to carry out Ward's promise of the 
night before, and open the strong box, in which millions 
of securities had been deposited. Ward held the key of 
this box, but the moment demanded heroic measures. 
The box was forced open, and found to contain only 
papers of doubtful value, amounting, even on their face, to 
less than $400,000. 

While the others still stood aghast at this discovery, 
Spencer, who had been listening at a ticker, announced 
in fateful voice: "The Marine Bank has closed its doors." 
With profound conviction in his face, he turned to young 
Grant. " This carries Grant & Ward down also." 

" I don't see that," replied Grant. " The loss of $600,- 
000 will cramp us, but it won't break us." 

He was soon undeceived. Instead of being worth 
$15,000,000, with an enormous bank-account, he and his 
friends found themselves without a dollar, and with a flood 
of demands pouring in upon them. Ruin to all the Grants 
he now saw coming swiftly. Not merely this, but excited 
investors clamored to be secured. They claimed that they 
had gone into the speculation because of General Grant's 
influence in getting government contracts. 

Just when matters were at the worst. General Grant 
hobbled slowly into the room. He was still disabled 
from a fall on the ice some months preceding, and used 
his crutches. "Well, Buck, how is it?" he cheerily 
asked. 

The son, his head still ringing with the blow which had 
fallen upon him, replied harshly, and without any soften- 



496 LIFE OF GRANT 

ing words : " Grant & Ward have failed, and Ward has 
fled." 

For a few seconds the old warrior faced the people of 
the office, his keen eyes piercing to the bottom of his son's 
anger and despair. Then he turned slowly, and without 
the quiver of a muscle, and without a single word, left the 
room and ascended slowly to his own office, to be seen no 
more in the office of Grant & Ward. About five o'clock 
in the afternoon, however, he sent for Spencer, the cashier, 
to come up and see him. As the young man entered the 
room, he found the general seated close to his desk, both 
hands convulsively clasping the arms of his chair. His 
head was bowed, and the muscles of his face and arms 
twitched nervously as he said : 

" Spencer, how is it that man has deceived us all in this 
way? " 

Even as Spencer tried to speak, the general did not 
look up; in fact, the young man's stammering attempt to 
answer seemed not to interrupt the current of the gen- 
eral's thought. He went on speaking: 

" I had not the least idea that Ward was concerned in 
government contracts. I told him at the beginning that 
I could not be connected with the firm if he was going 
into any business with the government. I told him that, 
while contracts with the government were proper, it was 
not proper that I, after being President, should be con- 
cerned in any way in such business. I supposed the con- 
tracts he spoke of were railway contracts, that he loaned 
to subcontractors, thus enabling them to finish their sec- 
tion, arid that they were willing to pay large interest for 
such accommodation." 

He went on for several minutes with an explanation, to 
which Spencer made no reply. He was evidently suffer- 
ing the keenest mental anguish from the charges made 
against his honor, and the cashier would gladly have 
uttered some word of comfort, but was himself too deeply 
moved and bewildered to do so. Finding Spencer as 
ignorant of it all as the rest of them, the general became 
silent, and the young man withdrew, leaving him seated, 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 497 

with bowed head, in the same position in which he had 
found him. 

That day was long and tedious, so Httle could be known. 
Without Ward, it was impossible to tell what the firm 
owned or what it owed. Claims developed of which U. S. 
Grant, Jr., had no knowledge, and which did not appear 
on the open books of the firm. The excitement on the 
street was very great. Investors with whom the Grants 
had no dealings whatever clamored to be secured. Great 
pressure was brought upon young Grant to make an as- 
signment in favor of certain creditors ; but he refused. So 
the day wore on. At the end it was apparent that Grant 
& Ward were hopelessly involved, and that every dollar 
possessed by General Grant was swept away. 

On Wednesday, U. S. Grant, Jr., went down to the 
office, but Ward did not turn up. The papers had im- 
mense head-lines, and all sorts of charges and insinuations 
were in type. Creditors called, saying that the bonds 
given to them for security by Ward had been rehypothe- 
cated. Some of these men covertly threatened young 
Ulysses. He manfully replied : " I presume what you say 
is true. I know nothing about it. I can't do anything 
about it. All I can say is, you '11 find me here during 
business hours, and at my house thereafter." He was 
ready to answer to any call. 

The entire family was in singular straits. Every cent 
of ready money was gone, and many bills for which 
checks had been given weeks before to butchers and 
bakers, but which the holders had neglected to cash, came 
up now a second time for payment. The general and 
Ulysses, Jr., found themselves actually in need of money 
for daily necessities. Mrs. Grant ordered her Washing- 
ton house to be sold, and that formed the fund upon 
which the entire family lived. They sold horses and 
carriages, and prepared to move into cheaper houses. 
Young Ulysses still refused to make any assignment or 
prefer any creditors. 

The general was visited on Thursday night by repre- 
sentatives of Mr. Vanderbilt, who wished to be secured 



498 LIFE OF GRANT 

upon his loan of the Sunday preceding. He looked to 
General Grant for his money. 

"You 're quite right," said the general. "It was an 
individual loan, and I am having papers drawn up to 
secure Mr. Vanderbilt so far as possible." 

General Grant now cast about to see how he could pay 
this individual debt, which he regarded as an affair of 
honor. He deeded to Vanderbilt the farm on the Gravois, 
near St. Louis, which was worth $60,000, a house in 
Philadelphia, some property in Chicago, and all his per- 
sonal property. In order to bring the sum up to the full 
amount, the old warrior turned over all his personal trophies 
— all the swords presented to him by citizens and soldiers, 
the superb caskets given to him by the ofticials of the 
cities through which he had passed on his way around the 
world, all the curious and exquisite souvenirs of China and 
Japan. He spared nothing. He fought the battle clear 
through as grimly as he had pushed Vicksburg to a finish. 
He stripped himself to the bare furnishings of his house. 
He considered himself no more liable for the debts of 
Grant & Ward than any other investor; but the debt to 
Mr. Vanderbilt weighed on his mind, and he could not 
rest until it was paid. 

Many of the papers criticized General Grant freely for 
going into the firm. Some of them covertly exulted, and 
insinuated that he was attempting to draw out of the 
wreck, retaining his immense profits. These things cut 
deep into the proud old warrior's heart ; but, as his habit 
was, he set his lips in a grim line, and was silent, so far 
as the outside world was concerned. Once, howe\'er, he 
opened his heart to a friend. Late one night, after he had 
signed away all he possessed to his creditors, he sat alone 
with his lawyer. As he went all over the action, and 
thought of Ward's cunning in securing that final check, 
his emotion became visible in an unusual restlessness of 
eye and limb. At last he rose on his crutches, and began 
hobbling up and down the room. When he spoke at last, 
it was in semi-soliloquy, as though he had almost forgotten 
the presence of his friend : 

" I have made it the rule of my life to trust a man long 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 499 

after other people gave him up ; but I don't see how I can 
ever trust any human being again." 

The worst was yet to come. A letter was given to the 
public press by Fish, the president of the failed bank, 
which apparently connected Grant directly with the 
methods of Ward. To save himself from condemnation, 
Fish now claimed to have been a victim, asserting that 
two years before he had written to General Grant, asking 
to be assured about the firm. In this letter, after speak- 
ing in a general way of the fact that he saw very little of 
General Grant, and suggesting that it was advisable to 
consult together, Mr. Fish went on to say : 

I have often been asked by friends and business men whether 
you and I were general or special partners. We were for a while 
advertised as special partners, but I think we are virtually and 
actually general partners. I think legally we would find that to 
be our status. 

He then spoke of a note inclosed from the president of 
the Lincoln National Bank, and continued : 

You may be aware that I am on the notes of Grant & Ward 
as an endorser, which I have discounted myself, and have had 
to get negotiated to the extent of some $200,000 in the aggregate 
at the same and at one time, which is not a trifling amount to 
me. It is necessary that the credit of Grant & Ward should 
deservedly stand very high. These notes, as I understand it, are 
given for no other purpose than to raise money for the payment 
for grain, etc., purchased to fill government contracts. Under 
the circumstances, my dear general, you will see that it is of most 
vital importance to me particularly that the credit of the firm 
shall always be untarnished and unimpaired. I will be most 
happy to meet at almost any time you may name, to talk these 
matters over. Please return me President James's letter at your 
convenience, with any suggestions you may have to make. 

The answer to this letter, as put forth by Fish, was in- 
dubitably in the handwriting of General Grant. It was a 
more or less complete answer to the letter above. 

Mv DEAR Mr. Fish : On my arrival in the city this morning, 
I find your letter of yesterday, with a letter from Thomas L. James, 



500 LIFE OF GRANT 

president of Lincoln National Bank, and copy of your reply to 
the letter. Your understanding in regard to our liabilities in the 
firm of Grant & Ward are the same as mine. If you desire it, 
I am entirely willing that the advertisement of the firm shall be 
so changed as to express this. Not having been in the city for 
more than a week, I have found a large accumulated mail to 
look over, and some business appointments to meet, so that I 
may not be able to get down to see you to-day ; but if I can, I 
will go there before three o'clock. Very truly yours, 

U. S. Grant. 

There was also put out a second answer to this letter, 
more valuable as a defense to Messrs. Ward and Fish than 
the other: 

My dear Mr. Fish : In relation to the matter of discounts 
kindly made by you for account of Grant & Ward, I would 
say that I think the investments are safe, and I am willing that 
Mr. Ward should derive what profit he can for the firm that the 
use of my name and influence may bring. 

This was signed apparently in General Grant's own 
hand, and upon it the detractors of Grant fell with joy. 
It was photolithographed, and sent throughout the coun- 
try. The signature was to all appearance genuine; the 
body of the letter was written in another hand. Action 
had already begun against Fish, and this letter became 
important evidence. When the trial came on, the testi- 
mony of General Grant was demanded. He was unable 
to leave his room, and the counsel for Fish went to the 
attorney for the Grants, and expressed the deepest regret 
that the trial should come up at a time when the general 
was so ill, and suggested its postponement. But Grant's 
attorney, knowing well the temper of the general, said : 
" No ; let the trial go on. General Grant is ready to 
testify." 

General Grant's deposition was taken in a room of 
his house on Sixty-sixth Street. He stated that he had 
considered himself merely a special partner in the business 
of Grant & Ward, liable onlv for his investment. He 
did not remember to have seen Mr. Fish's letter. He did 
not know that any government contracts were handled, 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 50I 

and he had no knowledge that his name was being used 
to induce others to invest in doubtful speculations. When 
the alleged letter to Fish was placed before him, he 
examined the signature closely, and said that it was un- 
doubtedly of his own writing, but that he had no know- 
ledge of the letter itself. He added that in the course of 
a long executive life he had become accustomed to afitix 
his signature to many papers without reading them, it 
being impossible to personally examine everything which 
was put before him to sign. 

The trial developed that the letter was written, at Ward's 
request, by Spencer, the cashier. Spencer remembered 
the letter perfectly, for the reason that Ward brought the 
rough draft of it to him on a pad, one morning in the 
midsummer of 1882. It had many corrections and inter- 
lineations for so short a letter, and that fact aided to fix 
the matter in Mr. Spencer's mind. It meant nothing 
unsigned, but with Grant's signature it would be very 
serviceable, and Ward had turned his attention to getting 
it signed. He afterward confessed to Walter S. Johnston, 
the receiver of the Marine Bank, that he had slipped it 
into a pile of other letters, and, presenting it to General 
Grant as he was hurrying to finish his mail and catch a 
boat, easily procured the signature without arousing 
suspicion. 

Ward's own testimony at the first trial was very re- 
markable. He was at first broken and a little bewildered, 
and came to the stand " looking like a man suffering from 
loss of sleep. His face was bloodless ; his ears seemed to 
hang from his head." He admitted that he had been 
insolvent for two years. He was unable to tell where 
and when he bought his houses. He did n't know what 
he had paid for Booth's Theater. He did n't remember 
when he bought it. He did n't know when he obtained 
property in Stamford, nor when he bought the furniture. 
The " books of the firm " were not the " books of the 
office " ; there was a difference. The " books of the firm " 
included books which the Grants had never seen. He 
admitted that there had never been any contracts ; that 
when he said " invested in a contract," it meant that the 



$02 LIFE OF GRANT 

money went into the bank as his personal deposit. He 
did not remember that he had ever had any dealings with 
the government of any kind. He admitted putting the 
Vanderbilt check into his personal account. He admitted 
having paid three thousand dollars for jewelry on the 22d 
of April, but he had forgotten to whom he gave it. He 
had no contracts, and he was making no such profits as he 
paid to investors. Business was transacted in the name 
of Grant & Ward, but no one transacted it but himself. 
He admitted that the Grants knew nothing about it.* 

This question was facetiously asked of him : " You made 
a sort of banking basis, then, by imagi)iijig that you had 
made profits, for a portion of which you were chargeable 
to an investor; and you would credit him with the ima- 
ginary portion of those imaginary profits, and then he 
would get it out by means of a check to your order, which 
you would deposit to your credit?" 

To this Ward replied: "Yes; something like that." 

" Was it anything short of humbuggery upon an ima- 
ginary basis? " 

To this Ward made no reply. He said again and again 
that the Grants knew nothing of his speculative business ; 
that he kept two sets of books, one of which no one but 
himself and Mr. Fish ever saw. His method, as he him- 
self delineated it, was to borrow large sums for pretended 
investment, set aside a profit out of the principal, and by 
prompt payment of this profit induce the lender to leave 
the principal in his hands. He deceived the many for the 
few, and these few were not the Grants. He was uncer- 
tain as to what became of immense sums. Some of them 
appeared on the secret book he kept, and some did not. 
In a later trial this singular book was put in evidence. It 
was cabalistic in text. No one could understand it, not 
even Ward himself. 

Out of it all this final conclusion was formed : Ward 
had carried on the most extraordinary game of "bluff" 
that the nation had ever seen — a stupendous scheme of 
paying profits from a principal which was never invested, 
or which went to pay some clamorous debtor; a "blind 

• Generalized from Ward's testimony before Commissioner Cole. 



» 



THE GRANT & WARD FAILURE 503 

pool," into which he led men to their ruin and ultimately 
to his own ruin. He was indicted first by the United 
States courts at the same time that Fish was indicted. 
Fish was convicted and sentenced to seven years' imprison- 
ment. Closely following Fish's conviction, Ward was in- 
dicted in the State court for grand larceny, convicted, and 
sentenced to prison for ten years. The judge, in senten- 
cing Fish, made it plain that, though the sentence might be 
lawfully seven times seven, out of regard for his gray hairs 
the sentence was not made cumulative. 

Out of this deplorable entanglement General Grant 
emerged cleared, so far as the judgment of the majority 
of his fellow-citizens was concerned, of any knowledge of 
the business which Ward conducted. There were those, 
of course, who were ready to believe that he knew of the 
use of his name, and that he shared in the profits. It is 
probable that no one fully informed of the facts in the 
case holds such an opinion to-day. Grant was the victim 
of over-confidence in a shrewd and ingratiating financier. 



CHAPTER L 

THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 

ON the first day of June, 1884, General Grant's physi- 
cal condition, as well as his financial situation, was 
deplorable. He was still lame from the effects of a fall 
suffered some months before. He was sixty- two years of 
age, without a profession, and unfitted for business both 
by ill health and by education. Having been an actor in 
more dramatic events than any other American that ever 
lived, having been lieutenant-general of the United States 
armies, and President for two terms of the United States, 
it now seemed as if nothing more remained for him but 
to slowly slip down into the decrepitude, comparative ob- 
scurity, and despair of an idle old age. This feeling, as 
much as any other cause, sapped his vitality and his reso- 
lution. He saw nothing more for him to do. The spe- 
cial fund of stock in the Wabash Railroad was decreasing 
in value, and seemed likely to fail of dividends. He was 
threatened with actual need. His fellow-citizens were 
harshly critical, and he was charged with bringing the 
whole of his financial trouble upon himself by undue greed. 
It was a time which taxed his resources to the utmost. 

Before the failure of the firm of Grant & Ward, the 
editors of the " Century Magazine " had approached him 
with a proposal to write an article upon the battle of 
Shiloh, which was still being hotly contested on writing- 
tables. North and South. But the general, being as little 
inclined to write as to make a speech, had bluntly refused 
to undertake the task. 

But conditions had changed, and when the editors again 

504 



THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 505 

approached him he consented, and began at once an article 
upon Shiloh. He had always held in reverence comman- 
ders like Halleck and McClellan, who could write a book, 
and considered himself the last man in the world to at- 
tempt anything more than a report. He was astonished 
and pleased when the article grew in his hands from a dry 
statement of facts to a very full account, with which the 
editors were delighted. From regarding it as a laborious 
task, he became deeply interested in it, and readily con- 
sented to continue his work with an article on Vicksburg. 
It took his mind off his troubles, and carried him back 
amid the splendid and dramatic events of 1862 and 1863. 

The second article was even more successful than the 
one upon Shiloh, being less controversial in effect. And 
now the publishers of the country, hearing that he was 
writing his memoirs, made him the most liberal offers for 
a book. Then it was that he realized his power to earn 
not merely money for his daily needs, but to provide a 
competency for his wife, if he should die before her. This 
consideration decided him to set to work in earnest upon 
the retrospect of his life. He had secretly resigned him- 
self to the thought that he was an old man and an infirm 
man, and that any work he had to do must be done 
quickly. 

He called in Colonel Adam Badeau, his military biog- 
rapher, and began writing, with his usual single-hearted 
intensity, upon the account of his school-days. He worked 
five or six hours each day at his house on Sixty-sixth 
Street, not far from Central Park. He did not venture 
down-town, and the men of Wall Street never saw him again. 
He was done with business, and the pleasures of his life 
were found in the glow of his own fire, in an occasional 
drive, and in the light of his grandchildren's faces. He 
wrote busily with his own hand, handing the manuscript 
over to his son and Colonel Badeau for revision and prepa- 
ration for the printer. He was a ready and fluent writer, 
and little change was necessary. 

One day in the early autumn, after eating a peach, he 
complained of pain in his throat. The pain was slight, 
but it returned again when he swallowed solid food. 



506 LIFE OF GRANT 

Thereafter eating grew each day more painful ; but as the 
spasm passed quickly away after each effort, he gave little 
thought to it until there came an exterior swelling of the 
throat, which increased perceptibly. Then the seriousness 
of the case became apparent to Mrs. Grant. She insisted 
on his calling upon Dr. Barker, the famih' physician. 
Dr. Barker considered it serious enough to advise the care 
of a specialist, and suggested Dr. J. H. Douglas. Dr. 
Douglas made an examination, and prescribed certain 
lotions and gargles, and the general went back to his work, 
in which he was now completely absorbed. He worked 
five or six hours each day, and his mind was deep in the 
past. He was resolute to complete his book during the 
winter. The publishers foresaw the great value of the 
work, and made him feel it in order to encourage him to 
proceed. 

He went every day to see his physician, using the 
street-cars from motives of economy. But notwithstand- 
ing all the lotions and alleviating washes, the pains in the 
throat increased till eating became an agony which even 
his iron will could not entirely conceal from the watchful 
eyes of Mrs. Grant. Solid foods at last became impossible 
to him. He kept his place at the table, but seldom had a 
part in the meal. 

In such wise the winter wore on. Steadfast friends 
occasionally called. Old army officers, being in the city, 
dropped in to see the " old commander," and former neigh- 
bors from Galena or Georgetown always found a welcome. 
Nevertheless, the "old commander's life would have been 
very irksome had it not been for the writing which filled 
much of his time and nearly all of his thoughts. He was 
now practically unregarded by the great world of com- 
merce and business. His friends in Congress were trying 
to help him by means of a bill restoring him to his rank as 
general of the army and retiring him on full pay ; but each 
attempt met with bitter opposition. The bill had been 
once defeated, in i88i. Since then the matter had rested. 
But when his misfortunes became known, attempts were 
again made to bring the bill to vote. A pension had been 
suggested, but this the general steadily refused to consider. 



THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 507 

There now arose a new occasion of distress to him. 
Some of the small creditors of the firm of Grant & Ward 
were attempting to levy on the souvenirs and tokens 
which General Grant had made over to Mr. William K. 
Vanderbilt in security for the loan procured in the inter- 
est of Grant & Ward. General Grant was poor, but he 
was not abject. He wrote to Mr. Vanderbilt, and requested 
him to offer for sale all the property he held, including the 
souvenirs and trophies of peace and war. To this Mr. 
Vanderbilt replied, expressing a willingness to turn over 
all the personal articles, to be held in trust by Mrs. Grant 
and the general during their lifetime, and to become the 
property of the government after their death. This Gen- 
eral Grant declined to accept, and the articles were turned 
over directly to the government, and placed in the museum 
at Washington. 

On February 20, 1885, the first bulletin of Grant's con- 
dition reached the public. " The action of Congress in 
refusing to pass the bill restoring him to his honors has 
been very depressing to him," the physicians said ; " but 
he is feeling very comfortable otherwise." They were 
making the best of a very bad case, for the general was 
already reduced in weight from nearly two hundred 
pounds to barely one hundred and forty-five, though his 
face did not show this emaciation. He had nearly ceased 
to work on his book. The first volume was finished, and 
the second was begun ; but the granitic resolution of his 
indomitable soul could not master the growing weakness 
and lassitude of his body. He became silent and distrait, 
and sat amid his family in abstraction which filled them 
with terror. When alone, he lay stretched out on one 
reclining-chair, with his feet in another, facing the fire, 
with eyes which saw neither flame nor wall. Occasionally, 
when roused by some friend, he spoke of his book, and 
expressed a desire to finish it. He spoke of it as one 
might who wished to complete some task before going on 
an inevitable journey. He was waiting the summons of 
the bugle, and was ready to obey. 

His activity of mind was enormous. He could do 
nothing but think. His great brain, filled with innumer- 



508 LIFE OF GRANT 

able scenes, conceptions, plans, and deeds, kept up its 
ceaseless whirl, turning night into day, and day into a 
phantasmagoric dream of the past. The writing of the 
book had recalled and made vivid and present all his 
changeful and epic history, and as the external lost power 
and interest, his mind turned back upon itself. 

He was confined not merely to the house, but to his 
room. To walk around the hall and back was a long jour- 
ney. Visitors were at last denied him, but he had around 
him nearly his entire famih'. His sons were with him con- 
stantly, and his daughter Nellie had been sent for. Little 
by little the details of his condition became public, and 
the returning regard of the world began to make itself felt. 
Resolutions of sympathy began to come in from State 
legislatures and other bodies. The Assembly of New York 
expressed to the New York delegation in Congress their 
wish that the bill in aid of General Grant should pass, 
and interest was again revived in it. 

At last, just in the final hour of the session, an agree- 
ment was reached whereby a vote was taken. Congress- 
man Randall moved that, by unanimous consent, the bill 
be taken up, and to this the Democratic majority of the 
house agreed, provided a certain contested election case 
were taken up and voted upon. Thereupon Mr. Wilson 
of Iowa, the holder of the contested seat, who had thus far 
successfully filibustered against his opponent, generously 
rose and said: " In order that this Congress shall do jus- 
tice to the hero of Donelson and Appomattox, I yield to 
the request of the gentleman from Pennsylvania." It cost 
him his seat and his salary, but the bill restoring Grant to 
his military rank and placing him on the retired list was 
passed. President Arthur was in the Capitol, waiting to 
sign the bill. He affixed his signature, and the formal 
nomination of Grant went immediately to the Senate. 
The Senate confirmed the nomination. 

The honor came almost too late for the " old com- 
mander." When the telegram announcing it was read to 
him, his eyes did not brighten, and he uttered no word of 
pleasure or even of interest. He had gone beyond the 
reach of acts of Congress. He had loosened his hold on 



THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 509 

life. " I am a very sick man," he said to a friend; and in 
his eyes was the look of a hunted creature, weary and 
hopeless of rest. 

During all this time the disease never rested. The 
ulcer ate its way deep into his throat, sapping his vitality 
and undermining his superb courage. It was recognized 
at last to be a very grave matter indeed, and the friends 
of the general began to allude to it as cancer. Up to this 
time the ulceration had not been considered incurable. 
Dr. Douglas and Dr. Barker grew alarmed at last, and 
called in other physicians for consultation. Even then 
no decision as to the character of the disease was reached. 
About the loth of March, a piece of the diseased tissue 
was placed before Dr. G. R. Elliott, an expert micro- 
scopist, who also submitted it to Dr. George F. Shrady. 
Dr. Shrady, who was afterward called to the case as one 
of the consulting surgeons, corroborated the opinion of 
Dr. Elliott. Without knowing whence the tissue came, 
nor anything of the case at the time, he made an exami- 
nation, and immediately reported : " This tissue comes 
from the throat and base of the tongue, and is affected 
with cancer." 

Dr. Elliott, though this was also his own conclusion, 
said : " This is a very important matter. Are you sure ? " 

" Perfectly sure. The patient from whom this tissue 
comes has epithelial cancer." 

Almost in a whisper the other said : " That tissue comes 
from the throat of General Grant." 

Dr. Shrady replied slowly : " Then General Grant is 
doomed." 

This appalling verdict of the men of science was made 
public after a consultation at General Grant's home, and 
the news was flashed round the world that General Grant 
was attacked by cancer, and was fighting his last battle. 
The nation awoke to sympathy. All criticism of the great 
general was for the time laid aside, and the Christian public 
offered daily prayers for his recovery. But the general 
grew daily weaker. He could not sleep without morphia, 
and yet he fought against its use. He feared becoming 
a victim to its power, and endured to the utmost the 



5IO LIFE OF GRANT 

agonies of sleeplessness before asking for relief. He was 
the most docile of patients. " You are in command here," 
he would say to Dr. Shrady. 

In order to take even liquid food, he was forced to fling 
the contents of the bowl down his throat at one gulp, be- 
fore the spasm closed his throat. It required his utmost 
resolution to do this. It was terrible to see his effort. 
And yet he seldom uttered a word of complaint. He 
never forgot to be courteous and mindful of others. He 
obeyed his nurses like a child, at the same time that his 
great brain pondered upon questions national in scope. 
He concealed his despondency with studied care from his 
wife, and was careful that she should not see him at his 
worst. His son Frederick and his physicians knew the 
whole appalling truth of his condition. The expediency 
of performing a radical surgical operation was discussed 
early in the case, but the surgeons considered the cancer 
too deeply rooted to be removed by the knife. 

The anodyne and the disease combined at times to 
produce a dazing effect, and his mind wandered. Once 
he said: " I am detailed from four to six." He was back 
at West Point, a ruddy youth again. Once he clutched 
his throat, and cried out, " The cannon did it," thinking, 
perhaps, of the officer whose head was blown away by 
solid shot at Palo Alto. He longed for spring to come, 
and thought if he could get out and see the green grass 
and the budding trees, it would help him. His illness 
brought out the purely human side of a great historical 
character. He became as gentle and patient as a woman. 

The 27th of March being a fine, warm day. Grant was 
taken to ride in the park, and seemed brightened by the 
change. Upon his return he was met by several attorneys 
engaged in the trial of Fish, the former president of the 
Marine Bank. General Grant's testimony was again 
needed, and though emaciated, worn with loss of sleep, 
and speaking with great difficulty, the general went to his 
duty resolutely and with a certain readiness. He told all 
he knew concerning the case, sparing neither Fish nor 
Ward. He said that he had no knowledge of any specu- 
lation in government contracts, and that he had distinctly 



THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 5 II 

charged Ward not to have any such business, and had 
informed him that if the firm of Grant & Ward was 
concerned in any way with such business he must retire. 
In the presence of death, his testimony had a convincing 
power which swept away all doubt. 

The examination occupied less than an hour, but it 
exhausted him, and he had a very bad night. Three days 
later he had a choking-spell so deadly in its sudden seizure 
that he rose from his chair in agony, crying out to his 
nurse: "Oh, I can't stand it! I must die! I must go!" 
But the spasm passed away, and under the ministrations 
of the physicians he became easier. 

It was now certain that General Grant was dying, and 
the usually quiet street swarmed with reporters, and with 
curious and sympathetic people, who walked slowly by, 
looking up at the windows shining with the flare of gas- 
jets at full flame. 

The 31st of March was made memorable by a strange 
incident. A professed astrologer had cast the general's 
horoscope, and predicted that he would die on the 31st of 
March. The family were anxious to keep all such matters 
from the general, and papers containing them were ex- 
cluded from the chamber. But one morning, when the 
family returned to the general's room from breakfast, they 
found him intent on the astrologer's prediction. 

They made no remark about it, but tried to keep his 
mind off the thought of death ; and yet he seemed to 
dwell upon it. As the date set by the prediction drew 
near, he seemed to be asking very often, " What day of 
the month is to-day? " He sometimes asked twice in the 
same day ; and when his son Ulysses answered on one 
occasion, he said: "You told me that before." 

" I know I did, father; but it was this morning." 

" I had forgotten it," he replied. The anodynes had 
affected his memory. 

The family were alarmed at his anxiety. He seemed 
dwelling on that particular day in March. At last the 
dreaded day came, and then it fell out that it was the day 
on which he was to receive his first month's pay as Gen- 
eral Grant. He had been thinking of that, and not of the 



512 LIFE OF GRANT 

astrologer's prediction. He could scarcely wait until the 
money came. When it was placed in his hands, he made 
it up into rolls at once, and passed it to his sons and to 
his wife, retaining only twenty- five dollars. He cared 
nothing for the money himself, but he was eager to put it 
into their hands. It was the final seal upon his restora- 
tion to honor and trust. His constant reference to the 
31st of March showed how deeply, after all, he appreciated 
the return of the nation's confidence and pride in him. 
His indifference had been concealment. 

" He is the most suppressive man I ever knew," said one 
of his physicians at the time. " He is not devoid of emo- 
tional nature, but his emotions from early life have been 
diverted from their natural channels of expression, and 
have expended themselves at the vital centers. What 
has been called imperturbability in him is simply intro- 
version of his feelings." 

Toward the end of the day, as he grew easier, the gen- 
eral said reassuringly : " Yes, I am much better. I think 
I shall pull through, after all." 

To his son Ulysses he said : " I am ready to go. No 
Grant ever feared to die. I am not afraid to die, but your 
mother is not ready to let me go away. My only wish is 
to leave her so that she will not want." 

But that night the physicians did not leave the house. 
They feared the worst. Some time in the early morning 
Dr. Shrady, who was sleeping in a near-by room, was 
roused by Dr. Douglas, who called him in great excite- 
ment, saying: " Get up; the general is dying." 

As the two physicians reentered the room, the members 
of the family were all gathered about the general's chair. 
Mrs. Grant was kneeling by his side, imploring him to 
speak. His head had fallen upon his breast, and he was 
drawing his breath with great difficulty. There was no 
time to be lost. 

"What shall we do?" asked Dr. Douglas, who was 
overcome with emotion. 

" Hold on ; let us try some stimulants ; the general is 
not dead yet," replied Dr. Shrady; and, with Dr. Doug- 
las's consent, he began to inject brandy into the veins of 
the sufferer's wrist. In a short time after the first touch 



THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 513 

of the syringe the pulse perceptibly improved ; the stimu- 
lant was having its effect. To the weeping family Dr. 
Shrady said : " Don't despair ; the pulse is improving. The 
general must not die. We will take the last chance." 

Meanwhile the Rev. Dr. Newman appeared with a bap- 
tismal bowl filled with water, from which he solemnly and 
with due form baptized the unconscious and apparently 
dying man. 

In a few minutes the general was able to speak. He 
wanted to know what had happened. " I am surprised," 
he said gently to his wife, as he comprehended the mean- 
ing of the baptismal water. He then murmured something 
about Hamilton Fish, and about his book. A little later 
he was able to say: " I want to live and finish my book." 
That seemed to be the most important thing. 

A marvelous change for the better now took place in 
the patient's condition. The sloughing of the diseased 
tissue left him easier, and the gnawing of the disease 
seemed to stop. He swallowed with less pain than for 
many weeks. He relished his food, and his gain was 
perceptible from hour to hour. Two days after the night 
when he seemed to be dying, he was walking about the 
room, and smiling and bowing at the window to the great 
crowds in the street. On Easter Sunday, when a great 
crowd was before the house. Dr. Shrady, upon whom the 
writing of the daily bulletins had fallen, said : " General, 
there are hundreds of people on the street waiting to hear 
how you are this morning." 

" They are very good ; I am very grateful to them," 
Grant replied. 

" What shall I say to them ? " 

"Say I am very comfortable." 

" Why not tell me, general, what you would like to 
have said, and I will embody it in a special bulletin as 
coming from you?" 

Then in faltering speech the general said : " I am very 
much touched — and grateful — for the sympathy and in- 
terest manifested in me by my friends " — he hesitated — 
" and by — those who have not hitherto been regarded as 
friends." 

His inherent delicacy would not let him speak of any 



514 LIFE OF GRANT 

one as his enemy at this time. He was magnanimous 
beyond most men ; but there were those whom he could 
not forgive, and to whom he nev^er alluded. 

He was still gaining miraculously on the 9th of April, 
the twentieth anniversary of Appomattox. The date was 
referred to by Colonel Badeau, but Grant only answered 
with a sad smile. He had no desire to celebrate it in any 
way. He was still troubled about the future of his family, 
and as he grew stronger the desire to finish his book came 
back. With that done, he would consider his work on 
earth finished. 

Now that this sudden turn to strength took place, the 
papers took on an injured tone. Their sympathy had 
been wasted. The general was reported to be taking his 
meals with his family, and actually eating solid food once 
more. Every one was glad to have the illustrious patient 
recover, of course, but no one liked to be misled by a 
corps of doctors. Therefore, Drs. Shrady, Douglas, and 
Barker became fair game. They were ridiculed as men 
of little knowledge and of no discernment. The funny 
men fell upon them with a rush. Imaginary bulletins 
were printed, giving humorous details of the condition of 
the doctors, signed, " U. S. Grant." Comic head-lines 
abounded: "Grant Thinks the Doctors will Pull 
Through"; "The Doctors Still Gain Slowly"; "A 
Bad Day for the Doctors ; General Grant Watching Them 
Closely." Their pulses were " said to be rising almost as 
high as their bills." They were called the "silent men," 
in derision of their sudden abandonment of bulletins. 
Great pressure was brought to bear to get outsiders 
admitted to a trial of their hands upon the patient. 

The general remained loyal to his physicians. He be- 
lieved in them, and no pressure could move him. He 
said to Dr. Shrady : " Never mind what people say. You 
are right. Don't be afraid. I am the one to be pleased, 
and I am satisfied. Hold the fort." 

He continued to gain, and soon resumed work. But all 
the time the disease was there. The eye of science, the 
microscope, had made no mistake. In the midst of this 
sudden return of strength, the malignant ulcer, like a 



THE FINAL YEAR OF LIFE 515 

living thing, reached out and laid hold upon the vocal 
chords, gradually throttling the voice of the great com- 
mander forever. 

Spring opened warm and wet, and the patient was op- 
pressed by it. His gain was fitful. There were days 
when he worked, and days when he did little but sit 
and dream, always in that strangely suggestive attitude, 
propped in a reclining-chair, his limbs wrapped in a gray 
robe, his hands folded on his breast, his eyes looking 
straight ahead, searching dim seas of speculation. Some- 
times he drove out for a short time, tottering to his car- 
riage. Surrounded by the street scenes, and the brisk, 
agile, and curious pedestrians, he seemed but the wraith 
of his stern, self-reliant manhood. When he felt particu- 
larly well, he dictated to a stenographer, walking painfully 
up and down the room, till his voice failed him ; after that 
he whispered his words into the stenographer's ear. At 
last he was forced to write it all with his own hand ; but 
he toiled with a desperate resolution painful to witness. 
About the middle of May interested persons spread the 
report that the general was not writing the book himself. 
This was contradicted by those who saw him working day 
by day, and the general himself despatched a letter to his 
publishers wherein he stated conclusively that the book 
was his own, and that no one had any claim upon it. 

He took pleasure in his work, for it helped him to forget 
his pain and weariness. " It is my life," he said to a 
friend. " Every day, every hour, is a week of agony. I 
am easier when employed." 

As May grew old the weather became more and more 
oppressive, and Grant began again to fail. Then the 
question of removing him to the mountains came up, and 
it was decided to take him out of the city at once. The 
press of the nation grew serious again. It was perceived 
that the physicians knew their business, after all. A friend 
(Mr. James W. Drexel) put his cottage on Mount McGregor 
at the general's service, and it was decided to accept of 
the offer, and June 16 was fixed upon as the day of 
removal. Thereafter Grant was eager to get away. He 
longed with ever-increasing wistfulness for the trees and 



5l6 LIFE OF GRANT 

the sky and the wholesome influence of nature's springtime 
life. 

He did not deceive himself : he knew he was going away 
to die; but he was eager to escape the town and the close 
confinement of his room. When he came out to enter his 
carriage that beautiful June day, he was like a man walk- 
ing toward his open grave. His tottering walk, his ema- 
ciated limbs, and his pale and weary face were indices of 
the power of the dread disease. There was no more joking 
on the part of the public. The crowd stood in silent awe 
to see him pass. 

As he entered the train some of the offtcials saluted 
him, and he disengaged his hand from his son's arm to 
return the salute ; some ladies bowed to him, and he 
returned their salutations with instant courtesy ; and so 
he entered the car and was whirled away up the pleasant 
shores of the Hudson River. Naturally he thought of 
West Point, which had seemed so beautiful to him when 
he first saw it, a country youth of seventeen; and it 
seemed more beautiful still, now that, as a dying man of 
threescore years and three, he was looking upon it for the 
last time. As he passed it he turned to his wife and 
smiled a sad smile, and tried to speak, but could not; his 
voice was utterly gone. 



CONCLUSION 

THE DEATH-WATCH IN THE WALL 

THE day after the general's arrival at Mount McGregor 
was made memorable by a significant message. After 
returning from a walk, which he seemed to enjoy, he grew 
restless and unaccountable in action. He moved to and 
fro in the cottage as if seeking something, and at last, by 
signs, he made known his wish for pencil and paper. 
Being furnished therewith, he sat writing busily for some 
time, and then handed two letters to Colonel Grant. One 
was addressed to Dr. Douglas; the other one bore the 
superscription: " Memoranda for my family." 

There was something ominous in his action, and the 
son tore open the letter in great anxiety. It was a mes- 
sage of death. " I feel that I am failing," he had written, 
and then passed on to certain things which he wished 
taken care of after his death. 

The family were thrown into an agony of grief ; but the 
general sat quietly in his chair, as if resignedly waiting the 
end. Fear was not in his face — only weariness and lofty 
patience. His work was done. He had given up the 
fight. His invincible will to Hve was withdrawn ; hence- 
forward the physicians must fight alone. 

The days that followed were simply days of pain and 
brave endurance, as his life forces slowly ebbed away. 
Occasionally he hobbled out into the sunshine on the 
piazza, but for the most part he kept to his chair and 
mused in statue-hke immobility on incommunicable 
themes. 

People from the surrounding country came in proces- 
sion past the cottage, eager to catch a glimpse of the most 

517 



5l8 LIFE OF GRANT 

renowned man of his time. The railway brought other 
swarms of curious or sympathetic tourists, and they stole 
near and gazed silently upon the dying man, and then 
moved on. He was not annoyed, as another might have 
been, by these passing shadows. Once he wrote of them : 
" To pass my time pleasantly, I should like to talk with 
them, if I could." If they bowed to him he returned their 
salutes ; and once, when a woman passing removed her 
bonnet, he rose and removed his hat in acknowledgment. 
His favorite seat was a willow chair which stood at the 
northeast corner of the veranda, and there he sat during 
the middle hours of each day to enjoy the sun and air; as 
it grew chill he returned to his fireside. He listened at 
courteously to the spokesman of a troop of school-children, 
or to a little girl presenting a bouquet, as to a delegatior 
of leading citizens or foreign journalists. 

Toward the latter part of June Dr. Shrady was sum- 
moned to see him. He seemed to find a pleasure in his 
young physician, who was a keen, alert man, military 
in his decision and promptness — a man of humor also, 
and of a certain buoyancy of spirits. With him Grant had 
a great deal of conversation, laborious on the latter's part, 
for he was obliged to write every word. 

" I am having a pretty tough time, doctor," he wrote, 
in answer to a question, " though I do not suffer so mucn 
acute pain. . . . My trouble is in getting my breath 
... I sleep pretty well, though rarely more than an 
hour at a time. ... I am growing lighter every day, 
although I have increased the amount of food." 

Alluding to his work, he said : " I have no connected 
account now to write. Occasionally I see something that 
suggests a few remarks. . . . At times it taxes my brain 
to work ; now it would not. If I had a chapter to write in 
my book, it would give me pleasure to write it. I am 
thankful, however, that the work is done, and I am not to 
add to it." 

Though he was pain-weary and foreboding death, he 
joked a little. Once he alluded to the doctor's close-cut 
hair, and said it was done in order that, if the doctor was 
stopped at Sing Sing, on his way to Mount McGregor, he 







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THE DEATH-WATCH IN THE WALL 519 

would be properly clipped. During an examination of his 
throat, he wrote an explanation of an attempt to whisper 
another jocose remark : " I said, if you want anything 
larger in the way of a spatula, — is that what you call it? 
— I saw a man behind the house filling a ditch with a hoe. 
It was larger, and I think it can be borrowed." Referring 

to some report in a newspaper, he wrote : " The has 

been killing me off for a year and a half. If it does not 
change, it will get right in time." 

But these moods were few; Grant knew too well his 
own condition. He said also : " I have had nearly two 
hours with scarcely animation enough to draw my breath. 
... I have little hope for sleep to-day. ... I do not feel 
satisfied with any position. I have thirteen fearful hours 
before me before I can expect relief." And, again: " It 
is postponing the event. A great number of my friends 
who were alive when the papers began anneuncing that I 
was dying are now in their graves. They were neither 
old nor infirm people, either. I am ready to go at any 
time. I know there is nothing but suffering for me while 
I do live." 

Dr. Shrady took leave of him, after promising to be 
with him in the final hour, which both men knew would 
come soon. The general computed the time it would take 
for the doctor to reach his bedside, and mapped out the 
route, and studied the various means it would be necessary 
to employ. He planned it as he had been used to plan 
his campaigns. 

In a letter to Dr. Douglas he reverted again to the 
" providential extension " of his time, and said : " I am 
further thankful, and in a much greater degree thankful, 
because it has enabled me to see for myself the happy 
harmony which so suddenly sprang up between those 
engaged but a few short years ago in deadly combat. It 
has been an inestimable blessing to me to hear the kind 
expressions toward me in person from all parts of the 
country, from people of all nationalities, of all religions 
and of no religion, of Confederate and of national troops 
alike, of soldiers' organizations, of mechanical, scientific, 
and religious societies, embracing almost every citizen in 



520 LIFE OF GRANT 

the land. They have brought joy to my heart, if they 
have not effected a cure." 

As his life rounded to a close, it took on epic scope and 
dignity. Had he died at the end of the war he would 
have been a mighty hero, but the man would have been 
unknown. Had he died after his second administration, he 
would have left a name at the mercy of politicians. But 
to die now, after his work was done, his fame secure, was 
in reality glorious. He forgave the world, but there were 
men — old friends and subordinate officers — whom he could 
not invite to his side. They had broken faith with him. 
Duplicity was to him a most hateful thing, and being 
human, after all, he turned his face from them. He 
wished them no harm, but he could not forget their per- 
fidious deeds. 

He continued to work a little on his book, for it was 
conceded that it could do him no harm, and might relieve 
his suffering. The Fourth of July was a great anniversary 
for him. On that day he had won Vicksburg. He did 
not need to be reminded of it, but he did not refer to it 
himself. It was far from his wish to revive memories un- 
pleasant to the people of the South. His was not a 
nature to exult over the defeat of others. 

A few days later there came to Mount McGregor a 
company of Mexican journalists ; and though suffering 
with special acuteness that day, the general welcomed 
them gladly. He received them in silence (for he could 
not even whisper), standing with bowed head while they 
said in formal terms : " We could not pass so near a great 
friend of Mexico without coming to pay our respects to 
him." They then passed before him, and were introduced. 
It was evident that his interest was very cordial. His 
face lighted up, and when they had all shaken his hand, 
he sat at a table and wrote a reply which showed his mind 
to be at its best: 

My great interest in Mexico is dated back to the war between 
the United States and that country. My interest was increased 
when four European monarchies attempted to set up their institu- 
tions on this continent, selecting Mexico, a territory adjoining us. 



THE DEATH-WATCH IN THE WALL 52 1 

It was an outrage on human rights for a foreign nation to at- 
tempt to transfer her institutions and her rulers to the territory of 
a civihzed people without their consent. They were properly 
punished for their crime. I hope Mexico may soon begin an 
upward and prosperous departure. She has the people, she has 
the soil, she has the climate, and she has the minerals. The 
conquest of Mexico will not be an easy task in the future. 

In answer to a Catholic priest who called to see him, 
he expressed his tolerance of all creeds. When told that 
all denominations and sects were praying for him, he 
wrote: "Yes, I know, and I feel grateful. All I can do 
is to pray that the prayers of all these people may be 
answered so far as to have us all meet in another and 
better world." To another he wrote: " I am glad that, 
while there is unblushing wickedness in the world, there 
is compensating grandeur of soul. In my case, I have not 
found republics ungrateful, nor are the people." 

About this time General Simon Buckner paid a visit to 
his old classmate and conqueror. " It is a purely per- 
sonal visit," he said to General Grant. " I wanted you 
to know that many Confederate officers sympathized with 
you in your sickness and trouble." 

I appreciate your calling highly [the Northern chieftain 
wrote, in reply]. I have witnessed since my illness just what I 
have wished to see since the war: harmonv — harmony and good 
will — between the sections. . . . We now look forward to a per- 
petual peace at home, and a national strength which will screen 
us against any foreign complication. I believe, myself, that the 
war was worth all it cost us, fearful as that was. Since it was 
over I have visited every state in Europe, and a number in the 
East. I know as I did not before the value of our institutions. 

The meeting was deeply affecting to both men, and 
General Buckner took his leave with Grant's lofty and 
patriotic words filling his mind ; and yet neither he nor 
General Grant perceived the far-reaching significance of 
the interview till it was over. 

As General Buckner passed out of the house, the re- 
porters fell upon him, eager to know what was said. " I 



522 LIFE OF GRANT 

cannot tell you," he said. "The visit was purely per- 
sonal ; and, besides," he added, with eyes dim with tears, 
*' it was too sacred. Without General Grant's consent I 
cannot speak." 

After reaching New York, General Buckner received a 
despatch from General Grant permitting the interview to 
be made public. When it appeared that the interview 
might add to the harmony and good will between the 
North and the South, he was eager to have it sent far and 
wide. Throughout all his later life he had had two pre- 
dominating desires : one, to put down rebellion ; and 
when that was done, then his whole heart went out toward 
the task of reconstructing the nation. And so now, though 
having gone away into a mountain to die, he still desired 
that every word of his should make for a united and 
peaceful nation. 

His wish was gratified. The words he wrote went to 
North and South as messengers of peace. Again he said, 
" Let us have peace." And standing there on the high 
ground between earth and the things beyond the earth, his 
words had all the force of a command and a benediction. 

In ever-increasing calm and ever-decreasing sensibility 
to pain, he drifted toward the shadowed world. His 
introspection increased, and the certainty of his speedy 
death grew very strong in his own mind. " I have ad- 
monitions that the doctors know not of," he wrote slowly 
upon his tablet. " I think it doubtful that I shall last much 
longer than the end of the month." Despair had no place 
in the growing serenity of his manner. There was a lofty 
courage which laid hold upon great conceptions of human 
destiny. He subscribed to no creed, but he had an un- 
speakable faith in the integrity of the universe. He had 
no map of the unseen land toward which he was march- 
ing, but he believed it to be a better land than this, and 
that light and the guidance of reason would be present 
there as in the world he was leaving. He did not know, 
but he had no fear. 

His consideration and his instant courtesy never left him. 
His gratitude for little kindnesses was inexpressibly touch- 
ing. His physicians could look upon it only with tears. 



THE DEATH-WATCH IN THE WALL 523 

On the 22d of July he expressed a wish to be in a bed. 
His bones were intolerably weary of the chair in which 
he had spent night and day during months of ceaseless 
suffering. The physicians looked at each other signifi- 
cantly. He was transferred to his bed, and as he stretched 
out his tired limbs and lay full length at last, he drew a 
sigh of relief, and smiled. He felt the delicious restfulness 
of the bed as he used to do when a boy after a hard day's 
work. That he knew it to be his death-bed is certain : but 
it was none the less grateful because of that; it was only 
the more grateful. 

" Does it seem good to be in bed ? " 

" So good — so good," he whispered, in reply. 

A deep, untroubled sleep fell upon him almost at once, 
but the experienced read the advance of death in the labored 
breathing and fluttering pulse. 

Messages clicked through the invisible wires of the 
night, and the physicians and the absent children came 
hurrying toward the mountain, while the nurses stood 
watching the worn and powerful face of the dying man. 
Slowly the blood ceased to warm the body. The lower 
limbs grew cold as marble, and the breathing grew ever 
quicker and lighter. The lower cells of the lungs were 
closing. Life was retreating to the brain. 

The family at last were all there. The loyal wife sat 
often by his side, where she could touch his face and 
press his hand. His eldest son, erect, calm, and soldierly, 
scarcely relaxed his painful vigil. It was a long and ter- 
rible watch, and when midnight came it was evident that 
death was present in the room at last. The great soldier 
lay in a doze which was the lethargy of dissolution, but 
still responded to the agonized words of love from his wife 
and daughter by opening his eyes in a peculiarly clear, 
wide, penetrating glance. This was only momentary. 
Each time it was more difficult to penetrate beneath the 
freezing flesh to the living soul beneath. At two o'clock 
of the morning Colonel Grant laid his hand on the dying 
man's forehead, and said : 

" Father, would you like a drink of water?" 

In reply, Grant whispered : " Yes." 



524 LIFE OF GRANT 

At three o'clock Colonel Grant again approached the 
bedside. " Father, is there anything you want? " 

"Water," whispered the dying man; and this was his 
last word. 

He could not swallow ; but when his wife placed a 
sponge in his mouth, he closed his lips upon it, and seemed 
relieved by the trickling moisture. 

All danger of a violent death was over. He was pass- 
ing peacefully away, his face calm and unhned by pain. 
His body, wasted and grave-weary, composed itself for 
final rest. The coldness crept slowly but inexorably 
toward the faintly beating heart. The birds sang outside, 
and the sun rose, warming the earth ; but no waking and 
no warmth came to the great commander, lying so small 
and weak beneath his coverlet. 

At seven minutes past eight, in the full flush of a glori- 
ous morning, he drew a deeper breath, and then uttered a 
long, gentle sigh, like one suddenly relieved of a painful 
burd,;n. In the hush which followed the watchers waited 
for the next breath. It did not come. One of the doctors 
stole softly to the bedside and listened, then rose, and said 
in a low voice: " It is all over." 

Ulysses Grant was dead. 

The pomp and pageantry of the funeral which followed 
surpassed anything ever seen in America. The wail of 
bugle, the boom of cannon, the rataplan of drum, the 
tramp of columned men, were all of martial suggestiveness 
— ceremony for which Grant cared little. But if his spirit 
was able to look back toward his outworn body, it must 
have been glad to see Joseph Johnston and Simon Buckner 
marching side by side with their old classmates, Philip 
Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman. Over the 
body of Grant, the great warrior of peace, the North and 
the South clasped hands in a union never again to be 
broken. It is well that on the majestic marble mausoleum 
erected to cover his body, on a wall looking to the south, 
these words should be carved: " LET US HAVE PEACE " ; 
for they express, more completely than could any other 
symbols, the inner gentleness and patriotism of the man. 



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